This is long so I appologize.
My wife and I took our OW in the usual manner.
2 nights a week of 1 hour class and 1 1/2 - 2 hour pool time, twice a week for three weeks then 4 open water dives over a weekend. Our AOW was a farce...book study at home, drop off the "reviews" to the DI on the evening of the Night dive followed by 2 days of two dives each.
We got certified....yeah.....certifiable is more like it.
Both of us are now on a self inflicted training plan including one night a week in the pool (until the season starts again) practicing skills, bouyancy trim and fin kicks etc, then plan on at least one or two days a week(2 dives per day) of shallow (60 or less) dives for most of the summer.
AFTER THIS we mght try to hit deeper targets, or try more challenging dive scenarios.
I'd like to uggest something...from a learners point of view.
The drive in the industry appears to be to get people diving quicly at a minimum cost...to self perpetuate the indusrty... create new fodder for the retail sales side of the business.
Most agencies appear (from my research) seem to follow this model..to one extent or another (individual instructors may be more effective in their training re extra knowledge imparted, and higher that baseline requirements).
The tech gurus (GUE) are now thinking of getting into the business of starting with entry level students and taking them up to AOW and slightly beyond....but so far their retail costing model will probably not work as it asks for the total (somewhere between 2 and 2.5 K) up front. Its easy to see how the other agencies are able to under cut this with the stepwise cost models that they use. 2 - 3 hundred per course. (just more courses required)
It would be interesting if any ageny, or training provider, tried adapting the multicourse, spread out cost model, of the manistream agencies.
I'll take the PADI model, as I am familiar with it.
IMHO, knowledge wise, a successful recreational diver needs the skills taught in the OW, Peak Perfromance Bouyancy, Underwater Nav, Multilevel, AOW, and Rescue courses, just to be able to handle the varied dives that they will face during the first two years of diving. Now one could take each course in succession in one summer, using just the minimum number of open dives (26).
The problem I see with this, and this is from a rookie's point of view, is that 26 training dives, where skills are the focus, and not practical diving, is no where near enough diving practice, to make effective divers. Perhaps PADI, and the other multi-tier agencies, should start imposing minimum logged dive pre-requisites for each stage of their training plan.
I'm not experienced enough to know how many dives between each course would be appropriate for the baseline divers,,but I would think somewhere bewtween ten and fifteen dives might be appropriate. This would equate to approximately 86 dives in total. No offense to anyone out there, but IMO, if haven't become a proficient diver after 86 dives (both pratcice, and educational) then perhaps a new hobby should be considered.
The classroom time, can easily be replaced with home based book study if it is verified by real testing, which could be preceeded by brief review with an instructor (Q&A time). It's the in-water time that, IMHO, needs to be beefed up.(and not just in-water training time, but in-water practice dives.)
Just my newbie 2 cents.
