Should AOW be taught simultaneously with OW?

[neil]

I would certainly teach an AOW immediately following the OW because I'd see it as a 9 to 11 dive OW course. I haven't completely thought it through, but if I have prepared the student well initially, the "advanced" dives should pose no problem.

Neil

 

[jeremyrfoster]

Charlie99,

In response to what I thought about combining the two I absolutely loved it . Honestly, I was a little worried going into my class that things were going to move a little slow. There are 60 y/o ladies, 12 y/o girls, and awkward teen boys that take these OW classes (and I'm glad they do!) and I was worried that the class would move a bit slow... and in fact it did.

In open water I achieved decent buoyancy pretty quickly and was working on that right out of the gates before my instructor got to me to ask me to partially flood and clear my mask. The bottom line is that I was just very ready for the information... I've always wanted to dive. When a person is truly ready for the information, I think it comes quickly. So, being given the opportunity to do the AOW classes the same weekend was great. I did Altitude, Navigation, Deep, Multilevel, and Peak Performance Buoyancy.

I guess it isn't accurate to say that they were done simultaneously. And it wasn't a weekend as in Sat/Sun... it was Fri/Sat/Sun. I dove 3 times on Friday (instead of twice like normal) so that Saturday I could do OW dive 4 and 2 of my AOW classes. Sunday I finished up with three AOW classes. So Saturday morning I was OW certified before starting my AOW courses. Over three days I dove 9 times. That's 3 training dives a day to meet PADI's max.

Some of the people in my class, when doing some fun dives after certification, were really struggling with diving to 30' and swimming at that level. They held the "elevator" and concentrated intensely on their gauges the whole time. I say they should get a few more dives in to get comfortable before trying a multilevel dive or peak performance dive.

I appreciate all of the feedback... this is a great board.

 

[crispos]

You know in Scuba Instruction, we are always trying to balance student enthusiasm against developing experience, spontaneous fun versus exercising serious planning skills. There is a wide range of natural ability and water comfort in any batch of Open Water divers. A few should definitely go right into the AOW. Most others probably need a few dives.

For example, they should have Good buoyancy control before doing the Deep Dive, they need automatic Reg recovery skills before a Night Dive.

There have been a few fatalities in Ontario on Advanced Open Water checkout dives which is unfortunate and surprising given an Instructor and usually DM were actively supervising.

 

[GeekDiver]

As for Nav in BOW

The only nav skill taught in OW is to swim a compass course and it's reciprocal. That's not going to be much of a help to the OW student who hops in off of the boat and encounters a current... or doing a shore dive and encounters a current, or some other thing that causes them to lose their bearing.

I'm not a DM or an Instr but it is my understanding that this excersise is more for task loading than a basic intro in nav..This gives the student something to do while actively swiming so that the students boyancy skills can be eval. Kinda a head game tell them there doing one thing while eval another. Some one correct me if I'm wrong.

As for AOW I think it depends on the person. I took it as soon as I could after BOW. I also understood it to be an intro into other aspecs of diving and not to cert you to dive to the full extent that the full classes/specialty actualy train you for. This is why they say that the dives "may" count as a dive in another class/specialty, not that they actualy certify for that specialty. I'm also aware that an Instr doesn't have to alow the dives and "may" require you to perform all dives for whatever speciality your end up taking regardless of what try it dives you took in AOW.

Geek