Absent? Guilty. Busy on your behalf? Guilty

Hey, hey,

So, it's been a couple of weeks since I last blogged on, but hey, the Toronto Scuba Club has to work too, you know!! So many pokers in the fire right now.

I'm not going to spill all the beans in one blog, there's many a pearl to be polished yet. But let's talk about our new e-Learning capability....

So, PADI has been offering e-Learning as a teaching mechanism for a year or so now, but it's only been available to resorts and stores. It has not been available to individual instructors. Starting this month, PADI has now made e-Learning an option for individual instructors.....meaning that through our principal instructors (myself and Peter), we can now offer that flexibility to our students as well.

We're still working on the minutiae of getting the product smoothly running. As the programme itself is run by PADI, it's more the pricing and interaction between the programme and our website/database system that is being refined.

In case you're wondering, the e-Learning option effectively removes the classroom portion of the Open Water course. It can also be used for the Advanced Open Water course, as well as the Enriched Air (Nitrox) course.

A student simply purchases the e-Learning option from us, then we provide them with a pin number. The student then logs onto PADI's e-Learning website, puts in their email address and the pin and off they go. The e-Learning pass that they have now gained access too lasts for a year.

In the e-Learning programme, the student basically does exactly coursework as a student would be completing in a regular Open Water course. Instead of using the book, completing the Knowledge Reviews and then attending classes with yours truly, the e-Learning student completes the Knowledge Reviews online and doesn't have to attend any classes at all.

Even the final exam is completed online. When the student has completed the e-Learning course, they simply do a further 20 questions (which are based on the materials they have already completed anyway) and they're done.

So what is the advantage? Well, our regular courses usually take place over two days on a weekend. Students need to arrive and sit in class for about two to three hours each day and complete their final exam on the Sunday. This normally means a 9 to 4 day for both days.

The e-Learning student, however, turns up at noon on the Saturday and completes a 20 question quiz. They then get changed and jump in the water for the pool session. Similarly, on the Sunday, they again turn up at noon and spend another couple of hours in the pool and they've completed their Class and Pool course. Why do they get to turn up late? Because they have already completed the classroom portion, in advance, at their own pace and in their own time. It saves so much time!!

We're about to start up a three-week, one night per week course for the Open Water. I'll talk more about that in a day or two, but the most exciting part is that we are only going to offer this course to e-Learning students!! They get to complete their class and pool course with only a few hours of attendance. It rocks....

Anyway, some more news soon.....

In the meantime, don't sit on the spiny sea urchin!!