I am the principle author of the 2011 PADI article on teaching students while neutrally buoyant. I formed a group of other such professionals to share ideas and experiences, and then they gave comments on my drafts.
Before I started, I experimented with it on my own for a year or two. One of the places I experimented was with discover Scuba classes. That is where I discovered something that you evidently don't know yet: It is easier for students to learn basic skills while neutral and horizontal than it is while they are on the knees.
I had them lying face forward on the pool floor, fin tips and maybe knees lightly touching the floor. It is important that they are close to horizontal--not a 45° angle. All the beginning skills are easier for them then. You can have the same size classes--no need to cut down on the number of students.
My discover scuba classes were all pool only, and I made buoyancy a focus because the goal was to have them have fun and want to come in for full certification. It was this work in Discover Scuba that truly made me focus on neutral buoyancy for regular classes, because after a short Discover Scuba session, those students looked more like seasoned divers than the OW students I was teaching on the knees.
I can confirm that kneeling is difficult, keeping that position is unnatural and it already absorbs part of the student's attention.
It is much easier teaching skills such as mask evacuation, buddy breathing, etc. while laying flat on the bottom or while swimming horizontally (the latter is how I always thaught buddy breathing from a single reg).
What I consider difficult is to have them staying still midwater in perfect buoyancy and trim control.
This is hard to get in 20 minutes, during their first experience with a scuba tank...
Regarding equipment I was alemways of the idea to add it one piece at once. starting from NOTHING.
In a complete OW course I start with no mask and fins, with a couple of basic exercises: frog swimming underwater for at keast 15 m, with eyes open and using properly arms and legs. And diving to 3-4m depth recovering 5 objects from the bottom, with just one breath at each emersion.
Only after these two exercises are completed I give them fins, mask and snorkel. I teach finning in various styles and body attitudes, including staying afloat while severely overweighted. To evacuate the mask (laying flat on the bottom or while swimming horizontally midwater).
How to reinsert the snorkel in mouth and evacuate it while keeping the face in water. How to breath from the snorkel without mask. Etc.
At the third step I give them a tank with no BCD and a single reg, and, after proper weighting, how to modify buoyancy using their lungs.
At this point I introduce the old-style breathing control (slow, complete exhalation, followed by inhalation up to 70% of vital capacity, followed by a 5 s inspiratory pause).
And finally I add, one by one, all the remaining stuff: BCD, secondary regulator, SPG, depth meter, timer, computer, suit.
Of course it is not possible to proceed so gradually in a two-days weekend.
I managed to compkete this OW program typically in two weeks, working with students every day in the pool (the first week) and in the sea (the second week, for a total of 6 true sea dives).
When working at Maldives, where there was no pool and many guests did stay just a week, we managed to shorten the course, calling it a "tropical open water".
Removing the suit and using smaller tanks, so no weights were required.
And shortening the part with no mask and fins.
But it was clear that with a course of just one week in favourable conditions the student becomes just a tropical diver, he is not ready for colder water with lower visibility.
I never approved the short OW course completed in just 2 days, which I see being promoted by shops.
I also consider quite unethical that diving courses are organised by shops, as a way of selling equipment.
But I accept that my ideas are considered too conservative and "old style" by instructors younger than me...
Back to topic: for me people partecipating to these "discover scuba" experiences are NOT students.
They pay for testing a new experience, not for being thaught.
We should provide them with an easy and satisfiying experience. The tasks proposed to them should more games than exercises, the goal is not to prepare autonomous divers, but to make them to want to become such.
So minimal, simple equipment, very little explanations, just what is required for employing such a minimal setup.
In this case "less is better"...
As said I used to propose this experience for free. I understand that a luxury resort is a different situation than a pool in town, where it is not possible to provide this experience for free.
But transforming it in a "course" is something which makes it much less appealing for many people: in many working environments "courses" are mandatory activities periodically forced on employees, who hate them...
So I would promote this as a leisure experience, not as a course...
Something as a session in a thermal SPA, with body massage included...
But, again, I fully understand that my ideas cannot be accepted by many other instructors. Still I hope you find them stimulating for the discussion...
