OWD courses: Nothing stands without a foundation
What exactly is an OWD?
The Open Water Diver is the first fully-fledged diving certificate and marks the transition from guided to autonomous diving. According to the ISO standard, the OWD qualifies as an “autonomous diver” – independent of the training association.
This means that divers can dive independently under comparable conditions with a buddy who has undergone equivalent training. In practice, the OWD can be compared to a driving license: The basic skills are in place, participation in road traffic – or in this case diving – is possible. At the same time, it is clear that additional training and experience is required for greater depths, more complex situations or complete independence.
For us as instructors, this has a special meaning: anyone who holds an OWD in their hand will go diving all over the world with it – often without any further checks or retesting. Everything that this diver can or cannot do, that he has understood or never learned, goes back to our training. That is why it is so important not to take any shortcuts here, not to skip any content and not to “somehow” get through the program. The OWD is not a certificate that you can take with you, but the basis for safe, independent diving – and for this, all the building blocks really have to be in place.
Course structure: A modular system
The Open Water Diver course is structured in such a way that it takes you step by step from your very first breath to becoming an independent diver. The theory, training in the pool or shallow water and the open water dives interlock like well-coordinated building blocks.
The first levels, Basic Diver and Scuba Diver, are part of the OWD – but they represent completely different levels of experience.
A Basic Diver has just learned the absolutely vital basics: breathing safely, moving, solving a few simple problems. Nothing more – he always dives under close supervision.
The Scuba Diver can already do more, the basics are in place, he moves more safely, knows what he is doing – but here too, supervision by a Pro is mandatory.
Only in Open Water Diver does everything come together: Dive planning, advanced buoyancy control, emergency drills. The training becomes complete and the diver is really ready to dive independently with an equally qualified buddy.
The logic behind the OWD course
The OWD logic tool shows you which content is included in Basic Diver, Scuba Diver and OWD – and how they build on each other.
Teaching theory in the OWD
The theory in the OWD is more than a compulsory part, it is the basis for your students to understand what they are doing. The course material is available to them at all times and they can work through the content at their own pace. Your job is to make sure that they do.
You can see your progress if you have access to your student account. The Center must activate you for this. Use this option to keep track of which chapters have actually been worked on and speak up if something is missing.
A great advantage of the SSI system is that the first three chapters can be read free of charge immediately after registration – without any payment. This means that the most important part of the theory can be completed before the actual course. Students can read the rest while on vacation, or they can book the kit in advance. It doesn’t matter which option they choose – the important thing is that they understand the core before they get into the water.
The question then is: what theory do you still have to teach in the course itself? At the ITC, we practice how to set up theory presentations in a classroom in the form of microteachings, but this is no longer the most common form. Think about how you can incorporate particularly important content into the course without turning it into long, tedious lessons.
Some things can be integrated very well into practical exercises. A workshop on dive planning offers the opportunity to introduce knowledge that goes beyond the OWD. Here, for example, you can introduce rock-bottom gas calculation and introduce an expandable form of gas planning right from the start instead of a rule of thumb that is difficult to understand. When it comes to “understanding computers”, it is worth investing time right at the beginning so that the students know what they are wearing on their wrists. When assembling the equipment, you can say a few words about how the parts work. And if we train a buddy check in the OWD that is quick and not annoying, we increase the chances of it being carried out later.
When we explain skills, we can always incorporate physical principles such as Boyle’s law, for example in the buoyancy exercises. This way, it doesn’t remain an isolated theoretical chapter, but can be experienced in context. Small workshops embedded in the practical part are more memorable than any slide presentation.
Workshop ideas
How can you incorporate theory into your OWD course?
The path of air from the bottle to the lungs
When assembling the equipment for the first time, the basic functions can be explained well, even if everything is explained in the manual: Without actually seeing and touching it, it is very difficult to remember such things. We can use this moment to show on the controller where the pressure is and why we always get exactly what we need.
What does "downstream" mean for regulators?
When you explain how to breathe from a free flowing regulator, it makes sense to briefly explain the “downstream” principle: The regulator opens with the “air flow”. If there is a malfunction, the air does not suddenly stop flowing, but there is too much. Everyone has already read this in the course material, but probably didn’t realize it – this is the moment to show why this information is so important.
Dive planning made simple
For open water dive 2, you can include a very simple dive plan in the briefing: Show the table and briefly explain what a no-decompression limit is. Establish that we won’t reach it at 12m. Then talk about how far our gas supply will last and introduce how much bar you want to have at the safety stop. Recommendation: Simply plan to be back at 5m with 70 bar – but then explore the shallow area a little further.
How does the computer work?
Yes, rtfm – but who reads the manual for a rental computer? At the very beginning, it’s important to understand the basic displays that every computer has. Go through them with your students and let them look for themselves where they can find which information.
You may not need a computer for the first open water dive, but it should be there from the second. On the second dive, simply have it at your side and be able to read off depth and no-decompression time, then call up the data for the logbook together and look at other functions, and from then on use it and clarify further questions can be a good concept.
Calculate SAC rate
You learn in the manual what the SAC rate is and how to calculate it, but nobody, really nobody, has ever understood this from the manual. That’s why it makes sense to get the average depth from the computer and calculate the SAC when writing the logbook. Manually, or directly in the SSI app, or here: SAC calculator
Dive planning OWD: expandable
Before the last open water dives, a joint dive planning session should take place where no-decompression limits, gas limits and emergency rules are discussed. This is a good time to give a few pointers on deco theory and introduce the rock bottom concept for gas planning – it’s simple enough, often provides aha moments, and can be used for the rest of your diving career. Take some time for this workshop and don’t let your students blindly follow a guide!
OWD courses: Training the practice
In the ITC, we practise the basics you need to train OWD students in practice. You work with a given skill, prepare a briefing, demonstrate the exercise in the water, recognize mistakes, correct them, keep the group under control, ensure safety and conduct a debriefing at the end. The “students” in this training situation are other instructor candidates who are just playing beginners and make exactly the mistakes that are intended in the scenario. This creates a controlled environment in which you can practise technique, sequence and safety without anything unforeseen happening.
You will learn exactly how this works in the practical part of your ITC, which really can’t be done online. But you can start to think about how you can turn the individual parts into a complete OWD course. This is also discussed intensively in the ITC, but the preparation makes it easier for you.
In reality, your task is different than in training: you don’t just have to teach individual skills, but combine them into a functioning course. It’s about planning a sensible sequence that logically combines theory, pool and open water and covers all OWD skills in full. To do this, you can simply follow the SSI cue cards for the course – but you can also partially adapt the course to your environmental conditions and your students. To do this confidently, you need to know the options really well. We will discuss various course plans in the ITC, which you can prepare with the OWD Planner (see box)
But planning alone is not enough. In a real course, students often react differently to what you experience in training – and not always in the way you expect. This is where it pays off if you have already assisted on courses or trained some of them as an assistant instructor. If you have already experienced real beginners in the water, you can better assess their behavior, react more calmly and adapt flexibly without losing sight of the course objectives.
Plan OWD courses
With our course planner, you can take your time to think about the order in which you want to distribute the exercises over the dives. You can choose the number of dives and the different waters (pool, confined water, open water)
You should check together at the ITC or with colleagues whether your plan meets the standards!
