Are you ready to join the ranks of the dedicated professionals who teach the world’s most progressive and popular scuba diver education programs?
Your Instructor Development Course is getting close. The chances are you’re feeling a little excited and nervous. You’re counting down the days until you can start, but what to expect? Let’s have a look at all the aspects of the IDC here at Blue Bay Dive, what do you learn during the IDC?
What is the Instructor Development Course?
The Instructor Development Course (IDC) is made out of two parts – the Assistant Instructor (AI) course and the Open Water Scuba Instructor (OWSI) program. Most dive professionals complete the entire IDC and go on to attend an Instructor Examination (IE), which is the final step to earn a PADI Instructor certification.
So, what will I be doing?
The New Revised PADI IDC Course has an even better focus on real-life teaching. After your meticulous preparation with the Digital eLearning, you did most of the presentations. Thus, the course spends most of the time focusing on real-life teaching on the basis of workshops.
A few of those workshops will be:
- PADI Systems workshop
- Dive Theory workshop
- Discover Scuba Dive workshop
- Open Water Diver Course workshop
- Continuing Education workshop
- Advanced Diver Course workshop
- Rescue Diver Course workshop
- and more
During these workshops we will challenge you to think like an instructor. The emphasis is on you and your fellow IDC candidates, to work together as a team and learn how to teach. Be each other’s students and each other’s role models.
Knowledge development teaching presentations
Of any course you can teach as an Open Water Scuba Instructor, you will be given a question from the knowledge reviews or quizzes. Assuming your students answered this question wrong, you will give a short presentation to guide them to the right answer. The PADI Lesson Plan will be the ideal tool to prepare your presentation, using the right structure.
No worries, your first presentation you will prepare together with the Course Director. New, in the revised IDC, is the recommendation to use a digital tool. A great tip is to use the PADI app! Do you have it on your phone already?
Plan your presentation to be the best, don’t just wing it!
Confined water presentations
You will learn to give a Confined water presentation and do several presentations to practice this as well. There are 4 steps you can follow to prepare a confined water teaching presentation. After the presentation you will find out which skill you are going to teach, you review the performance requirements for the skill on the specific dive.
Next step will be to refer to the PADI’s Guide to Teaching for conduct and technique recommendations for the skills. After that you can also search in the Guide to Teaching for common problems for which to prepare. The last step will be to fill out your dive preparation slate to make sure you’ve included everything in both the briefing and debriefing. The Course Director and the staff is there to help you prepare the presentation. You can always ask for recommendations or clarifications.
Think about how you would conduct the skill. Is there any special equipment you need, like a descent line? How would you solve problems underwater and what signals to use? Don’t forget your DEMO underwater!
Open water presentations
The Open water presentations are very similar to Confined water presentations, but you now need to be in Open Water, meaning at five meters of depth or deeper. There are no demonstrations this time, but very clear briefings in which you can revise the skill. During Open water presentations, you teach two skills in the same session. Very important during the Open water presentations is also your environmental awareness!
Where do you place your students? Do I want them kneeling, in a fin pivot or neutral? Know your dive site you are teaching in!
Skill Circuit and Rescue exercise # 7
All 24 skills of the Skill Circuit you must do as a demonstration and you will be scored out of 5. The New Revised IDC will score you by some skills as well on demonstration while being neutrally buoyant. The demonstration quality expected of a PADI Instructor is a long way from being able to do the skill as you would expect of a certified diver. Key words are: SLOW, EXAGGERATED & POINT OUT DETAILS.
Next to that, during the IDC we will practice with you Rescue exercise # 7 – Unresponsive Diver at the Surface. We help to make sure that you have the right head support, a good flow in your sequence and that you are never breaking the cycle.
Prepare yourself and watch the PADI Skill Circuit demonstration videos, made by Dive Division.
Theory, Standards & Exams
During the PADI Systems workshop and the Dive Theory workshop, you will get a lot of information. Some of them you need to know, like the 5 sections of your Dive Theory: Physiology, Physics, RDP, Equipment, and Skills and Environment. But other information you need to know where and how to find it. We mean in the PADI Standards & Procedures.
Do you have the most current version of the Instructor Manual ready to be used?
All this information and the practice tests you will do during your IDC helps you with the exams you will do during the Instructors Exam (I.E.). There is the open book (meaning you can have your instructor manual available) Standards and Procedures exam where you can expect questions on ratios, depths, and documentation. Then there is the 5-part theory exam, with twelve questions each on Physiology, Physics, RDP, Equipment, and Skills and Environment.
Feel free to contact us by e-mail if you have any questions about any part of your IDC!
At the end of your IDC you have a one-on-one session with the Course Director, in this session you will decide together if you are going to do the I.E.
It has been an intense course so far, but the light at the end of the tunnel is the I.E.
A PADI Examiner will be flown in and you can do your 2-days of exams.
“A little secret from me to you! I.E. stands for It’s Easy”.
All the PADI examiners are lovely and encouraging, so no need to worry! So now, are you READY? Next IDC will be August 13th, 2020.
Have you not signed up yet, you can do that online on our website or send us an e-mail for more information!
P.S. The best thing about the IDC is that your fellow candidates will likely become friends for life!