AOW gets a new diver more dives with an instructor...No matter what the specialties are. These equate to time in the water!!
This logic just doesn't do much for me.
First off, if you need more dives with an instructor, you shouldn't have passed OW! The OW class ... even the minimal one that most agencies now teach ... is intended to train you to dive independent of supervision in conditions similar to those in which you were trained.
It even says so right in the Standards manual.
So where's the need for "more dives with an instructor". That logic just comes right out and says that the instructor failed to meet the goals of the class.
This is WHY so many people are coming out of AOW saying that they didn't learn anything ... because the dives you attain in AOW effectively don't do anything except expose you to the things you were SUPPOSED to have learned in OW.
No one should ever walk away from a class feeling like they didn't learn anything. And by going directly from OW to AOW, you're setting yourself up for failure ... because you're going to be so focused on the things you were SUPPOSED to have learned in your OW class that even if the instructor tries teaching you something new, you won't have the mental bandwidth to deal with it.
AOW is supposed to be much more than just a few more dives with an instructor. It's supposed to be where you learn how to plan and execute more complex dives than the simple ones you were exposed to in the OW class. Following an instructor on those dives isn't going to teach you how to do them yourself ... but following the instructor is just about all the newly-certified OW diver is going to be capable of doing.
I refuse to teach a class like that. My expectation is that before a student of mine takes AOW, they will be comfortable with the basic skills ... in the basic conditions that they were trained. They will be fully capable of using those skills without a lot of conscious effort. That will take some diving between those two classes to accomplish.
Once in AOW, they're going to be learning a lot of new things ... and they need to be comfortable enough with the OW skills and knowledge to be able to build on it.
I've yet to meet the diver who can make that transition straight out of OW class.
... Bob (Grateful Diver)