I discovered in college that I learn much more from reading a book, than I do from lectures. With the exception of textbooks with esoteric derivations, applying principles I'm not familiar with, I'd much rather read than listen. From what I understand, though we may be a minority, there are quite a few people who have this learning style. So I say kudos for making lecture materials and tests available online, for those who would otherwise be napping.
As halemano said, not everyone learns this way. My girlfriend, on the other end of the spectrum, could probably skip reading any of the materials, and abosrb everything in lecture. She's also super-smart and was probably swimming before she could walk.
As for the whole weekend crash course on diving, I have mixed feelings. But I'm optimistic.
I'm still pretty new to this, but it seems that OW scuba courses generally turn out two types of people: people who pursue diving locally, most of the time with friends, and people who dive primarily on vacation, and rely heavily on DMs.
The people who dive vacations (this is much of my history, BTW), become better, more confident divers under the supervision of a DM. The OW course was, for them, and intro class, and they grow their skills in a controlled environment. The people who pursue diving more locally (generally, more frequently as well), fall in with a group of friends. Often, this social network involves people of different skill levels diving together, with the newer ones learning, whether it's explicit or not, under the supervision of older, more experienced divers.
The common theme here, is mentors, in one form or another. People who graduate the OW course, grow under the guidance of someone more experienced. And the numbers don't lie- the injury/death rate for the sport is very small. Whatever we've got going, seems to work from a safety perspective. As for attrition, I think that has more to do with human nature than anything else. Consider the numbers of people who just took the class to appease someone else, or the people who quit when they started crunching financial numbers, and, of course, those who just lost interest. How many people do you know that have been skydiving? Skiing? Took a dance lesson? How many of those pursue it seriously?
What I'm getting at here, is that it seems that over the years that standards have been thinning, the sport has been growing in ways to accommodate less educated divers. Perhaps twenty years ago, newly minted divers weren't as in need of mentors as they are now, but it seems that these days, there are opportunities everywhere for brand new divers to learn from others in a safe environment. Frankly, I'd rather get my intro to the equipment, an overview of the basic skills, and learn the rest from friends in a comfortable environment.
Of course, this isn't always the case- new divers do get injured, and sometimes die, but as I said above, the numbers speak pretty clearly that this is by far the statistical anomaly. It seems to me, we're witnessing the evolution of a VERY new sport (I know it's been around for a long time, but not in this recreational form). Frankly, I'm not too worried, and am interested to see where it all goes. Perhaps sometime, the material will be so thin and costs so low, that all divers pay for a card, and then seek out and learn from mentors. That seems to me, mostly a return to the roots of the sport, and not necessarily something to worry about.
Just my .02
