IDC teaching presentation: introduction

There are two kinds of presentations that you will need to give during the IDC. This post will deal with "micro teaching" presentations. The other type is called a prescriptive teaching presentation. The next series of post will deal with how to develop knowledge presentations. Knowledge presentations consists of the following three sections:

Introduction – introduce the topic by saying what you will be talking about.

Body – explain the topic

Summary – restate the main points to emphasize learning.

This post will focus on developing the INTRODUCTION section of the IDC teaching presentation. The introduction creates a readiness to learn and informs the listener about where the presentation is headed and motivates the learner to pay attention and tells the listener how to interact.

The introduction consists of 4 sections:

• Contact
• Value
• Key points
• Contact

1. Contact – gain attention the attention of your audience by relating the topic to an experience the students may have had.

2. Value – The value statement gives the student a reason why they want to listen and learn. Create a need to know.

3. Key points – Give a brief overview of what you will be covering in the main body. Hint: use the key points listed in your instructor manual.

4. Conduct – Tell the students to turn in their books to a specific page, take notes etc.

PADI IDC - classroom presentations

A few days ago I posted an entry about my initials thoughts about how to make the IDC (instructor development course) more relevant to the real world. In this continuing series, I would like to make some more observations on the IDC and give some suggestions for improvement.

The IDC curriculum is intended to expose the candidate instructor to a lot of information and hopefully he/she will come away with enough to make them good instructors. At times it seems like you are drinking information from a fire hose. There is a lot to absorb and for those who do the intense seven to ten day course will be able to identify with the fire hose analogy.

The main focus for the IDC is to develop and sharpen the candidates presentation skills. There are classroom, pool and open water presentations. Each type of presentation has its own set of challenges. For the most part, the pool and open water presentation training is good and equips the candidates well for the real world teaching situation.

The classroom presentation development however leaves a lot to be desired. The way that PADI teaches its instructors is to develop presentations following a set outline. The candidates are then judged (by course directors and sometimes staff instructors) on how closely they follow the outline. The problem is that the outline does not translate well to the real world teaching situation. I could go into details here, but the key point is that there is too much redundant information required in the various sections of the presentations that really to not add to the value of the information conveyed.

However, having said all that, in the next post, I will detail a method that you can follow that will ensure that you will consistently score 4.5 or better on your presentations. Unfortunately, the method feels a little rigid, but with practice you should be able to knock out one of these presentations in 10 minutes or less.

IDC - training inadequate?

The Instructor Development Course (IDC) is something that every instructor has to endure. The course is fairly demanding and tries to cover many different areas, ranging from legal to marketing to presentation skills. Generally, I think that the PADI curriculum works well and prepares instructors adequately.

However, I have some suggestions and thoughts of how to make the IDC more relevant and appropriate to what we will be doing as instructors.

Some background: for the last three years or so I have been a staff instructor assisting in teaching IDC's at our local dive store. So my experience is from both sides of the IDC - first as a candidate instructor and later as a staff instructor.

My major problem with the IDC is that it does not seem to equip the candidates adequately on how to conduct classes. By the time I completed my IDC I knew how to prepare and deliver a skill presentation and how to teach a topic in the class. The thing is that we do not equip the candidates to conduct a class as it is going to be delivered in the real world situation.

When I started teaching classes, I really did not feel ready to teach the class. Technically I was ready and able to deliver the information, but did not feel confident about presenting a class from start to the end on my own. For example, I did not even know how to complete the student folders (instructor's portion).

Obviously we all learn on the job, and get through the initial jitters. However we can make the IDC's a little more practical and ensure that the instructor candidates are ready for the real world teaching situation.

Oxygen kits

My Local Dive Store (LDS) has a number of the Divers Alert Network (DAN) oxygen kits that are available to the instructors for use during classes. We make a point of taking the kits with us every time we use the pool or the lake for teaching and sometimes even for fun dives. The kits comes in large watertight green cases and are easy to transport. Personally I appreciate the LDS having so many kits available to us to use. I think it speaks highly of the store owner that he has invested in having the kits available to us.

I wrote recently about attending a Emergency First Responder (EFR) instructor update class and a DAN diving emergency management provider class. The DAN class focused on treating divers whereas the EFR class was a general first responder and first aid class. A part of the DAN class was training in using the oxygen kits. I have taken the training a number of times before, but this class covered some new territory. We learned to use the bag valve inflators that can be used instead of doing mouth to mouth resuscitation.

One of the instructors, who seems to be fairly flush with cash, indicated that he personally owns a number of oxygen kits. I guess I have not really thought about owning my own kit since the LDS kits are always available to me when I teach classes. However the instructor made the point that he carries one in his car and has a few others for family emergencies. My question to instructors is "do you own your own oxygen kit and what is your opinion on having your own kit?"

I think that it is a really good idea to have your own oxygen kit, and I will be investing in one in future. Of course there are some issues to consider with owning your kit. The first is that pure oxygen is regarded as a prescription medicine in some states and should be treated as such. The second is that the tanks need the same inspection as regular SCUBA tanks (annual visuals and hydrostatic testing every five years).

One of our instructors is also an EMT (emergency medical technician) at a local fire department. He has said on many occasions that we do not use oxygen enough. He feels (and I think he is correct), that we should use oxygen as a first recourse instead of a last recourse. Because of my training, I guess I always considered oxygen to be used only in the case of heart attacks, near drowning, and the like. He suggested that we should be more liberal with the use of the oxygen and that it is probably a good idea to use it even then the person is not feeling too well and you not sure of the exact symptoms. For example the student might be very fatigued after the 200 yard swim and has some risk factors (smokes, over weight etc), then the prudent thing might be provide oxygen.

Being well prepared (trained and equipped) for the emergency that you hope will never occur is something we need to strive for as instructors.

Shock me once, shock me twice

Over the past few days I have taken some refresher classes to maintain my emergency first response (EFR) instructor rating. At the same time I thought it would be a good idea to take the new DAN diving emergency management provide (DEMP). Both courses spend a lot of time on how to perform CPR (cardio pulmonary resuscitation) and how to use the AED (automated external defibrillator).

To those of you who have taken the new CPR training that includes AED use, you will probably be familiar with how easy it is to use the AED. It is really very easy and intuitive. AED's are being installed just about everywhere you go now. In the building that I work in, they have one on every second floor. In the city that I live in, I understand that every police squad car is equipped with an AED. I also heard that there is a city in Colorado that has equipped every single city owned vehicle with AED's.

This morning I read an article in our local newspaper that the latest guidelines from the AHA is that mouth to mouth rescue breaths are falling out of favor. Instead the focus is on chest compressions to keep blood moving to vital organs. The article mentioned that doing rescue breaths takes up around 16 seconds that could have been used for doing chest compressions. I guess it is a balancing act, but I think that if it a question of someone being freaked out by the idea of doing rescue breaths then the new guideline is a good change.

A thought occurred to me while we were playing around with the AED. We are so focused on Ventricular Fibrillation (V-Fib) and getting an AED to the victim that we might miss other problems that might be going on with the victim. The problem that I have with the extreme focus on AED's is probably summed up by the old adage "when you are a hammer, everything looks like a nail". Obviously I am totally in favor of using AED's and would like to see even more available in public places. I am just concerned that an over emphasis on the technology will make for poor first responders.