Before OWW, we had 5x 1 hour pool sessions with a class of 10 students. I felt it was semi rushed with a ton of practice time for skills.
For OWW:
Dive day 1: lots of surface skills (remove/replace BC, weight belt, inflate SMB, snorkel/reg exchange, tired diver tow, cramp release, etc.). Surface compass navigation. Very little under water. For the underwater time of Dive day 1 we did the following:
Dive 1: descent to 15-20 feet to bottom. Very little visibility. Partial mask flood and clear. Regulator recovery. Total time on bottom not counting descent and ascent time, maybe 2 minutes.
Dive 2: descent to 15-20 feet to bottom. Very little visibility. Full mask flood and clear, buddy air share. About 2 minutes on bottom, again.
No swimming around or finning about.
Dive Day 2:
Dive 3: Mask removal and replace. CESA - But not the best. A little rushed, we did the mask removal and replace, and then underwater ascended with regulator in mouth locked arm to arm with instructor, exhaling one breath. I don't feel like this is anywhere close to a mastered skill, as it was a little confusing what exactly we were switching to do under water. Then we proceeded to our exploratory dive, which was short, I think 12 minutes at 33 feet was the exact figure.
Dive 4: Full exploratory dive. 22 minutes, 50 feet.
This is my current total experience.
I now have a DSS BP/W here that I have yet to use. Plan was to go to a pool to dial that in for a couple hours in board shorts, and just swim around and practice skills on my own from OWW (there's a LDS with a pool here available for that sort of thing).
Then I would to the drysuit cert: 1x pool session, adding the drysuit to the above, and then the 2 check out dives.
And then I would be on a weekend dive trip in drysuit with BP/W on a minor altitude dive.
I could do the dive in a wetsuit. I am open to that. I would prefer to do it in the comfort of a drysuit, but if I am going to be task loaded and it would be safer to do it in a wetsuit, I could do that. The temps are sub 40 degrees, it would be a 7mm wetsuit + 7mm farmer john for 14mm in the core. Doable, not ideal. Also paying for a wetsuit rental when I already own the drysuit, but safety trumps that if this is a concern.