Honestly, I think AOW would be a great class with some of the topics that are already available for the class . . . I think a buoyancy unit should be mandatory, and a deep diving unit (with the proviso that the student has to demonstrate safe skills for diving deeper than 60 feet), and a navigation unit. A night dive is a reasonable one, but you can also take a wreck dive or a photo dive and make it meaningful.
The big problem with the class is not that the topics are too silly, but that there's no meat to them as they are taught. A buoyancy unit, where you help correct weight and weight distribution, and work on hovering, and descending and ascending the way BDub describes, and executing emergency procedures like mask clearing or air-sharing while maintaining buoyancy, can take several dives even to make significant progress on. (Took me six months after Fundies to reach passing standards!) My PPB dive for AOW consisted of the instructor taking weight off me, putting it back on, taking my light away from me and giving it back. I didn't learn much, and I still was out of trim and did my descents on my back.
Navigation can be taught by more than a compass; depending on available sites, a course can be planned using a map or a sonar scan or a dive briefing, and people can be asked to execute it and perhaps describe landmarks or retrieve markers. Making use of natural navigation, suggestions for correcting for current, what to do when you're good and lost . . . There is a lot of stuff you can include, but you can't really do it in one dive.
Similarly, deep diving could include some discussion of dissolved gas versus bubble models and what they practically mean for ascent profiles, as well as gas management and the concept of safe reserves. Deep dives should include an air-sharing ascent as well as holding stops. Deep dives are a perfect place to practice the skills the buoyancy unit introduced. Again, how can you do it in one dive?
Bob's AOW class is a wonderful thing. It's got teeth, and the diver who takes it comes away with a great deal more information and some solid, useful skills. But I've known Bob to take a month to get a group of students through the class, what with repeating dives until they meet standards, or sending people away to do a little practice before going to the next unit. It's not a five dive wonder, that class.
