When we did our rescue class on Maui, the shop sent us the books which we were required to read and complete prior to arriving. We met for a couple of hours to go over the knowledge reviews, talk about stuff, and take the test on one evening (we took the DVD back to our room and watched it that night too). The next day we spent most of the day going over the "confined" portions of the skills and learning about oxygen administration. The final day we spent nearly the entire day doing our "open water" skills and emergency drills.
We found it was an excellent way to do rescue as we spent quite a bit of our time prior to the trip reading and learning, then were able to apply the reading in a practical manner. We had an excellent instructor whose style was to spend more time doing rather than sitting in a classroom, and we feel strongly we benefitted from her style greatly.
I'm not sure if you'd call that a "referral" or not, but it might be something to consider finding out if you could structure the class similarly.