This thread is particularly interesting to me, as an Instructor, and helps me better understand what an AOW students may be expecting from the course.
Yes, that is the purpose. In fact, the overall offering was for many years covered by the broad title, 'Adventures in Diving'. It exposes participants to diving experiences more varied than the OW experience, through a series of 'Adventure Dives'..Are these 5-dives supposed to be just basically an experience in new dive situation under instructor supervision?
Possibly. The general idea behind AiD is that you learn in a more focused, and therefore efficient, manner. For example, if you do a night dive, you would logically think to bring a light. What kind of light would be better? What kind of lights are available? Would you (finally) learn that 'two is one, and one is none' by experiencing a light failure at night? Or, is it more efficient to be shown that before your first night dive? Experience is a great teacher, no doubt about it. And, as Nietzsche said, 'That which does not kill us makes us stronger.' But, experience can also lead us down a path toward extinction - if we learn to do things the wrong way, and keep doing them the wrong way, we may become poster children for Nietzsche's admonition.I don’t think I learned anything I didn’t already learn through experience of diving more often. The more often you dive, it seems you naturally learn by trial and error yourself (ie buoyancy control on deep dives and ascents, natural navigation) and common sense and logic (ie flashlights and backups in the dark).
And, that is a good example of what AOW is all about. Yes, we teach compass navigation in OW. But, it is rudimentary at beast, rather superficial in fact. A good AOW instructor, who uses a compass on a regular basis, will show you A LOT about compass navigation that you won't necessarily figure out for yourself. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean that every AOW course, and every instructor imparts that wisdom.Compass navigation was new to me, so that was a new skill. But for most divers I think they learn it in ow certification? And others could easily learn it from an experienced diver friend. It was like a 5-minute review of what I read in the aow manual, but to actually use it to find that coral, rock, and ascent line was a bit of challenge and quite fun!
While there is an academic component, the course is primarily experiential - much less didactic work than OW. It is, as the name implies, a series of adventures.Am I supposed to go through any classroom time learning any kind of scuba science or whatever like I did in ow certification (ie Boyle’s Law)?
When I took AOW, it was - in hindsight - a very poor course. I could have asked questions similar to the ones that you have posed. In fairness, I did learn quite a bit - that night diving scared the heck out of me; that a quarry at 75 feet is VERY cold; that nominal performance requirements can be met without the Instructor really helping the student learn (or even being in the water with the student on some dives). One of the things that I did when I became an Instructor is make an active decision to do things very differently, to make AOW a valuable, and enjoyable, and encouraging, experience.I’m wondering if mine is similar experience as others in aow certification or am I missing out on anything?