"We start to forget what we learned nearly immediately, 50% of what we learned in the first day and 90% of what we learned within six days."

Several years ago, we ran the first Leading EDGE workshop to help manage drift and combat normalization of deviation in our GUE diving community. We left a GUE diving class at the top of our game, and we recognized that the time between classes was long enough that we would forget things. The Leading EDGE workshop was designed to help deal with this “forgetting” and it allowed for divers to work with other GUE instructors and refresh their skills set. We tried to present two classroom lectures on gas planning and deco during the first workshop but there simply wasn’t time.

Since then, we have enjoyed two more Leading EDGE workshops and V 4.0 is nearly full and planned for next March 15-16^th, 2024!  They have been terrific opportunities to realign our skills with our original training, but there hasn’t been time to do anything but update our in-water skills.

Many people have asked about putting  together a program that would address the missing parts of our curriculum updates. After a lot of head scratching and thinking, we think we have a solution.

Using the same eLearning platform we implemented in 2020 for our GUE training we developed what is basically the online version of the Leading EDGE Diving Proficiency program!

There didn’t seem to be a good way to keep divers up to date and current with things like gas planning, decompression planning and even general diving knowledge. We have built three courses that start with GUE Fundamentals, then Tech 1 and then CCR. Each program is self-contained with discussions about diving related topics and a series of review questions that are designed to not only keep you up to date, but also stretch your knowledge a bit so that you can apply existing skills to new scenarios. 

The idea is to give you real life dive planning skills and the ability to apply your knowledge in a practical way.

Here is an example of the type of question that requires existing and updated knowledge applied “outside the box”:

The following scenario has three questions. Björn finally took a DPV class!  He is excited to take you diving on his favorite wall from his cousin’s boat. This time he has borrowed his cousin’s light so he knows his cousin will follow him anywhere in the water because the light is expensive!  The reef is 45m/150' deep and goes forever! Bjôrn borrowed another DPV for you to use so you both have DPV’s and can surface whenever you need to. The DPV’s travel at 50m per minute (150’). He has arranged double 12 L cylinders for you both filled to 230 bar. (HP 100’s filled to 3500 psi).

Question 1: What is your minimum gas for this dive?

Question 2: What is your turn pressure?

Question 3: How far will you travel on your wall?

You have 150 bar or 2200 psi in your Al 80 decompression bottle. How much deco time do you have available on this cylinder? How far can you travel now?

Our goal is to help create a learning culture for divers and help combat the “Forgetting Curve” that is a real part of learning.

Each series of questions is auto-corrected so you will know how you did as soon as you select “submit”!

You will also receive a detailed email automatically if you don’t get everything right, and this email includes the correct answers, and most importantly the “how” the answers are derived.

 There will be a new edition of each online workshop every three months, with a “topic in focus” as well as a new series of skill testing questions. The idea is to help you maintain currency in your general diving knowledge, gas planning, decompression planning, Human Factors, and in the case of the Tech 1 and CCR program, learning how to stay up to date with failure management.

The initial feedback on this program has been outstanding, and we're excited to release it to the community!