Diver0001 once bubbled...
Walter, it's a matter of expectations. AOW was a poor choice of names. What it is *not* intended to do is to make students more dependent on the instructor. What is *is*, i believe, intended to do is to offer beginning divers a little more experience under supervision and to expand boundaries somewhat with the intention to prepare a beginner for diving *without* supervision. For the most part this is clearly what I see happening around me.
I took my PADI AOW about 15 years ago, and that was *precisely* my intent. In fact, that's how I looked at it from the beginning, and planned it from the beginning -- straight out of basic into AOW.
Although I'm not as cynical as you are, I do agree that it isn't a real skills course. THere are some skills and theory offered but it's limited in scope and if one *expects* to learn a lot in AOW then it will result in disappointment. At best, I see the AOW as "the rest" of OW and with a decent instructor you'll have a confidence builder.
What I believe is missing from the system is, as you say, a "real" skills course with attention given to imnproving water-skills and evaluation done on the quality of the skills performed, not just on the abiltity to comprehend how it should be done. The bouyancy specialty (to pick an example) is like all the other PADI courses; it offers the basics of theory, skills, and possible risks, you make a couple of dives to see it once in practice and then it leaves it to the student to go out and learn it.
Hmmm. Tend to disagree -- there's lots of continuing training out there, from the buoyancy specialty you mention, to IANTD stuff, to DIRF. What's missing from the system is a structured way to engage in safer practice.
There seems to be a contradiction in a lot of the discussions -- at the same time, some say "basic isn't enough" and "people should go practice skills". I believe that most new divers realize they aren't competent to go out on their own, either don't have a buddy or the buddy is equally inexperienced, and have no ready means of continuing self-study. Three strikes, they're out -- there's the 9 out of 10 that never dive again after the first year.
Back when I took AOW, I got exactly what I was expecting of it: 20% here's-some-exposure-to-interesting-skills, and 80% get-wet-with-an-experienced-diver-keeping-an-eye-on-me. Unless I wanted to take AOW again and again, there's no good "supervised play" option available.
In fact, there's an idea: we talk on and on about how the LDS needs to differentiate itself. Suppose an LDS said "after you take our AOW, you can come back, space permitting, as much as you want and re-participate in the skills dives." Or "We will, every weekend, have an instructor at popular dive site X. Take AOW from us, and you can show up for $5. The instructor will poll the group to see if there are any specific skills people want to work on, and then lead the dive." I think those would be _huge_ differentiators.
--Laird
