I spent time learning how to navigate after my AOW class. I got to dive with a guy whose nav skills looked like some kind of sorcery. They were that impressive. I made my mind up that I would do my best to get those level skills. I did take a nav course that was taught to standards and pretty much by the book. It was not impressive so I started looking for good nav courses and in my area couldn't find any that were better than the one I had.
All the others were being taught by the book to standards.
So I I went and just worked with divers whose skills at nav were good and I did a lot of practice on my own. I began to get much better and while still not full robe mage level I was no longer uncomfortable about jumping in anywhere.
When I became an instructor I looked at the Nav course for the YMCA program that I got my first instructor cert through and discovered, that like other nav courses, it sucked if taught by the book so I wrote my own.
Nav courses for pretty much every agency I've looked at, and I have the standards for nine of them, are really not much more than an introduction and the biggest downfall is they don't have any minimum entry requirements.
Nav is going to be challenging if you can't do precise turns, have lousy buoyancy and trim, poor buddy skills, and are not willing to work at it by taking small steps.
Also, the dive requirements that work in one area are way too ambitious in others.
And they try to cram too much into to few dives.
My Nav class is 6 dives with a pool session prior to the class to see if the student has the basic skills necessary to be successful and have fun with the nav class.
The class is 6 dives, uses lines and reels on the last 2, has map creation as part of class, and requires excellent buddy skills. When starting nav, there is a lot to keep track of. Sharing the task load with a buddy makes it much easier and is what I did to build a foundation. Then I went and worked on it solo.
Every time I go in the water I do one thing nav related for sure. I take an initial heading and always have an idea of what the reciprocal is so that I can get back.