Just finished AOW. Took me a while. It was garbage.

[BoltSnap]

Jim,

Just to make sure that I understand you, how many hours do you dedicate for the classroom work and how many dives are there in your AOW course? Also, how many days does it take to do all of the dives?

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Classroom is 6-8 hours depending on the students knowledge level. Some of my AOW info is covered in our OW class and therefore just needs to be reviewed. Students from other agencies likley have not had the info so it will take longer. There are 6 dives. Standards allow for three training dives per day. Day one is Adv Skills, UW Nav, and Night/low vis. Day two is Deep, Search and Recovery, and Buddy Skills and Assist. I will add days or dives if I feel the student needs them or requests them at extra cost. The deep dive is set to be done early to allow for a minimum SI of 1 1/2 to 2 hours. The search and recovery dive and the buddy skills and assist are both done shallow (less than 30 feet) with a sufficient SI between those dives. If the student or conditions dictate other wise I will spread the dives out over a couple more days. In the summer I have access to a site where I can do some of the shallow work within an hour of my house. The deep dive requires by my standards a minimum of 80 feet depth and the closest place is 2 hours away so it is usually a weekend deal. Since the site is also at altitude I like to get there the day before to acclimate. Being at altitude for the dives we adjust for this. Some will use a dive with no skills at the site and call it an altitude dive which meets one of the required dives for some agencies. But if all dives are done at altitude this just seems like a way to get a freebie in and say that something meaningful was done. When in fact the opportunity to get another skills dive in has been lost.

 

[The Chairman]

I wish that the OP would give us a break down on how his $500 was spent. I offered an AOW that in reality cost the participants well over $1000.00. Of course, that was because we spent a week in Bonaire!

That being said, my current classes are totally different than they were back then. They vary between being remedial and presenting new information.

The very first AOW dive concentrates on trim and buoyancy. We go from there to explore and expand the student's limits in a variety of ways. After all, diving is all about limits.

 

[Jim Lapenta]

Agreed. This AOW format was first taught to a couple from north carolina who spent close to 3 times the class tuition in hotel, meal, and travel expenses to come to me. Both felt that not only was the course worth it but it had the effect of improving their overall communication skills as a married couple.

 

[bracko]

From the sound of this I would blame your shop for ripping you off, not PADI.

agreed. Although i think PADI regions should put up the schedule of fees they charge to dive shops, it's a bit of a grey area with some stores charging $150 "directly payable to PADI" and others only $50 for the O/W...

in australia EVERYTHING is more expensive with diving... mine cost me $350 including book, tests, cert card, instructor time, gear hire and boat dives. the only additional cost was transport to the dive site and parking.

 

[DevonDiver]

agreed. Although i think PADI regions should put up the schedule of fees they charge to dive shops, it's a bit of a grey area with some stores charging $150 "directly payable to PADI" and others only $50 for the O/W...

This is not possible, because PADI charge dive centres different rates for their materials, depending on the status of the centre/ number of certifications issued...and, of course, the volume of materials that get purchased.

It is a scale of costs.... the bigger and busier dive centres pay progressively less for the materials. Small centres pay a higher rate. As a consequence, many small dive centres will not buy directly from PADI... as they can get a cheaper 'trade' rate from a third-party supplier (that can pass on discounts it gets from bulk ordering).

in australia EVERYTHING is more expensive with diving... mine cost me $350 including book, tests, cert card, instructor time, gear hire and boat dives. the only additional cost was transport to the dive site and parking.

Costs will always vary according to region/location. It is a lot more expensive to hire premises in Australia, than it would be in Indonesia. The same is true for instructor wages (cost of living). Ditto for utilities (fuel, electricity,water), business taxes, business licences etc etc etc

In remote locations, there may be extra cost involved with an operation because materials need to be transported and/or posted to the dive center. Where materials and equipment needs to be imported, there will also be considerable import taxation to pay. This serves to bump up costs.

The scuba industry is very competitive for businesses. I know from personal experience that the biggest challenge facing a dive centre manager is to offer competitive pricing in a highly customer-driven market.

There are many strategies for achieving this (negotiating the best deals, purchasing co-operatives, reducing overheads, diversifying income streams etc). Dive centres also place themselves within specific markets. For instance... low volume, high quality, high cost, or (at the other end of the spectrum)... high volume, lower quality, lower cost. Ferrari vs Toyota.

The only strategy that shouldn't be used is cutting costs at the expense of safety. If a dive centre is able to offer substantially lower costs than it's competitors, then you should always be mindful of how they manage to do that. Either the manager is an absolute business genius, or they are lowering their operating costs in a way that their competitors are not prepared to do. You can guess what 'tactics' that would entail....

As a customer, it is only fair that you prioritize price/cost as your criteria in the selection of a dive center. However, in doing so, it is vital that you take the time to understand why a dive centre has achieved lower prices than it's competitors...or why they have opted to charge higher prices. If you do that, then you will be able to make your selection on the basis of value for money.

 

[Divedoggie]

I teach 5 dive classes a week at a University, as well as additional courses to the public through a dive shop. By far, my favorite class to teach is AOW. The University version is an 8 week course, not counting the 5 OW dives. The diveshop version is 6 hours of classroom and a 2 hour pool session. It also requires numerous hours of home study.

The students must complete every knowledge review in the PADI AOW book and then give a presentation on an aspect of diving that they are passionate about using multiple sources, as a final exam. The classroom sessions discuss equipment choices and configurations, gas planning, mixed gas, detailed dive planning, physiology, physics and dive theory, environment, dive travel reviews, dive book reviews, and so on.
This semester a girl who will be studying abroad in Australia gave a presentation on the Great Barrier Reef and went into detail on coral health as well. Another student presented the class with a history of military diving, beginning with strategies used by Alexander the great. Every student gave a power point and video presentation that took them hours to put together, and they provided source documentation.

They complete a pool session where they are required to learn a number of buoyancy skills, various finning techniques, and exhibit excellent trim in numerous situations.

All of the cert dives must be converted for altitude and usually include, deep, nav, multi-level/computer, search and recovery, and night diver. The students are filmed during their training dives and we later watch the video and critique trim, buoyancy, finning, and the specific tasks they are working on.

For all of this, they are awarded a PADI AOW card. I am awarded $60 per student. My motivation for all of this work is to produce excellent divers who are excited and enthusiastic about diving, and I hope that they will ultimately carry the torch as the next generation of committed divers. The generalization of "put another dollar in" is insulting to me.
If you feel ripped off with your educational experience, go find a number of committed Instructors that post here on SB and see if they can restore your faith in education.

PADI has provided me an avenue into the world of scuba diving. They keep it light-hearted and fun. Their mantra of "meet people, go places, do things" is right on. All I have to do is use the PADI guidelines, meet PADI standards, be creative and use my experience and research to teach the best courses that I can teach.

 

[DevonDiver]

Divedoggie.... that sounds like an excellent programme. I particularly liked the concept of getting the students to make a presentation, which encourages research and is a good motivator to learn a subject. I am now sitting here thinking how that idea could be amended to work within a 'tourist' dive shop enviroment, where people have limited timescales and access to information resources. I think it is a concept that I'd like to work with; certainly within the higher level training courses.

 

[Divedoggie]

Divedoggie.... that sounds like an excellent programme. I particularly liked the concept of getting the students to make a presentation, which encourages research and is a good motivator to learn a subject. I am now sitting here thinking how that idea could be amended to work within a 'tourist' dive shop enviroment, where people have limited timescales and access to information resources. I think it is a concept that I'd like to work with; certainly within the higher level training courses.

You have so much knowledge and experience, so I hope that you can come up with a program that will showcase that! What an opportunity to share some of it to a greater number of people!
It is much more satisfying as an Instructor to get creative and vary the routine.

If tourists have access to the internet, then they can do some research to make a presentation. It might have to be a chalk talk enhanced with some youtube videos, but I believe it would be a successful endeavor.

Since the University course takes place over 8 weeks, its easy to cover a lot of material and to research/arrange nice presentations.

The extended shop course was a hard sell to the shop owner. He liked the pool session, and the possibility that an educated and enthused diver is more likely to purchase gear, but not the 6 hours of class. He also wanted the class and pool session to be completed the same day.
Ultimately he decided that students must show up for class with the quick review and all 16 knowledge reviews completed. Classroom time would be 3 hours and then off to the pool. This nixed the opportunity for individual presentations.
Since we have to travel as a group to our OW sites, we have the opportunity at the hotel to really go into the details of the 5 dives and to review the videos of the dives together.

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I can see why people are upset when they pay a fair amount of $ don't get what they expect. Likewise, dive shop owners and instructors are trying to feed their families. There is nothing wrong for charging $ for expertise, though. If the course meets and exceeds customer expectations, everyone is happy.

Past market research has shown that people wanted a streamlined advancement system. Applying an Adventure dive to an Advanced course and then to a Specialty is evidence of that.
Nowdays, it seems more people who pay for a Specialty which involves 4 dives, want to do all 4 dives working on assigned tasks with their Instructor, even if they had done a similar dive during AOW. We can give the customer the choice.

Potential new OW students and continued-ed students should shop around. Ask the specific Instructor who would teach your class about the curriculum and what he/she expects from you. Are you willing, as a student, to put in the extra time and work as well?

 

[SandyBramm]

I am sorry to hear that you didn't enjoy your class...sounds kind of fishy to me also...$250 for your book?? We charge $350 that includes the book, your tanks, including nitrox if your already certified for it, any rental gear you might need, and our AOW students get 6 dives instead of the four. We try to make it both educational and enjoyable at the same time, giving our students a great variety of dives, deep, wreck, etc...but I guess the moral is like anything else...shop around for your classes. Compare what you get and go from there. There isn't a written test for the AOW Padi Course????, maybe they just threw that in?? Reguardless...I hope you enjoy the rest of your diving, perhaps don't shy away from Padi, but just check into the instructors/shops you have to choice from....