I see a lot I agree with in both Mike and Bob's posts (as usual) even though they differ so much.
As to my AOW experience 5+ years ago, there was actually one girl in the class that needed help setting up her equipment. Me and another student were the only two somewhat competent divers taking the class, and most of the instructor's time was spent teaching remedial skills to the bad divers (none of which to my knowledge dive anymore).
Like someone said, it is hard to address AOW without addressing the entire system of dive training currently being taught. OW in its most common form, teaches you basic skills that you in no way need to master, or continue practicing. These skills are not brought up again until the Divemaster level in most cases, and even there, they are not taught in a practical setting. My point is, there is a lot of growth and learning that needs to take place outside the classroom setting with the current system. In a lot of cases that does happen, but in still others it does not.
The idea of requiring a specific number of dives in between some certification levels is not a bad idea, but people learn at different rates, and some people will do 20 dives without practicing a single skill.
Practically speaking, there is also the problem of competing systems. No matter how much you change AOW, it will still be AOW, which the shop in town is teaching for $99 with the purchase of a new regulator or BC. Sure, it will be a better learning experience, but the shop in town claims theirs teaches everything you need. So the only way to realistically get an improved AOW is to make it mandatory across the board for all training agencies in town. This will not happen anytime soon. There is simply too much of a market for the current class.
One thing that I believe has a shot at making a difference is to offer a skills based diving endorsement in addition to the dive instruction. Instead of having a set curriculum, training materials, etc, this would just be a test. The skills tested would represent the "end goal" of a certain certification level. There are a lot of instructors that truly seem to offer a good course for their students. All of these courses are almost completely individual, but I would bet that the skills that they instill in their students can be pretty well summed up in a common list. If we had an endorsement, several things are possible:
1. Any instructor, regardless of training affiliation would be able to certify a diver for an endorsement based on their performance on the specified tasks. This would make it integrate into the current system fairly easily, and instructors would not be put under the financial/time pressure of changing affiliations. There could be a quick internet training for instructors wanting to give out the endorsement. The instructors would also probably have to prove their own skills and themselves have the endorsement.
2. Students would have a definite selection criteria to help weed out the good courses from the not-so good ones. The instructors of the good courses would also have an additional certification to differentiate their courses from the $99 course offered by the shop in town. Students like cards. If they get another, it gives them a discrete and measurable difference to your program.
3. Dive Operations who require a certain cert level for liability reasons could jump over this idea since it would be skills based, and not "take your course, get your card".
4. It could be used as a wicket to decide when students are ready for the next level of certification. Even in Bob's class, there are probably some students who may take longer to get things than others. This would let someone have their OW Cert cards, go out and practice the skills so that they can get the endorsement. It gives them something specific and measurable to shoot for.
Anyway, there are good/bad points to something like this, the most obvious of which is deciding which set of skills should be included, and how we make sure they are measured appropriately. It would also be a hard sell differentiating these standards from the "PADI Minimum standards" set forth in their course outlines, etc. Still, I can't think of any better way to integrate with the current mainstream approach to training.
Tom
