Incident due to battery change on dive computer

[Wookie]

.... comes back to the importance of our own self-paced choices when we believe we either know what we want and need to know, or we don't believe we know it and keep exploring until we do.

The challenge in this discussion is partly about the training agencies and the material and the delivery of the material and how much time is spent on the material....but it is at least equally about each individual's internal, dynamic metacognition. To oversimplify it, when someone doesn't know what he or she doesn't know....

The OW student has no idea what they need to know, or how much comprehension is required, or what depth of knowledge is required. AIn a lecture format, the professor (lecturer, person imparting knowledge) will emphasize what they think is important. Either because it really is important, or because the knowledge is needed to pass the test, which means that the test maker thought it was really important.

When you throw a ton of information at a student who has absolutely no context of what is important, either it all becomes important, or none of it does. How can they know what they need to know if no one tells them?

 

[DavidFL]

I agree completely that we need instructors, or tests that lead to certifications we want, or other motivations to help us decide what we need to know.

I was trying, and obviously not doing very well, to get at our own ongoing assessment of whether or not we are "getting it" to our own satisfaction as we progress through any learning sequence. That sense, when I'm trying to learn something, that I either am getting it, or I'm not getting it and I need to do something about that, has been a big factor in my own lifetime of learning and I think it is important to recognize, but harder to make specific recommendations.

As an example of how it works for me, reading Frank's earlier post about oxygen algorithms vs oxygen counters motivated me to go seek out that information for the dive computers that I use, and I definitely learned something from that effort that I previously had not even contemplated.

Setting aside for a moment the need to pass a test and acquire a certification, I stumbled across the concept 'there is no such thing as an undeserved hit' a long time ago in a lecture by a Navy DMO who was at the time the high-level supervisor of the Navy chamber in Hawaii. That was one of those "aha" moments that changed the way I perceived my need to learn and understand tables and computers and my own continuously changing physical condition. After I had that moment, and while I was still teaching basic classes, that became a major component of what I tired to get across to my students.

 

[boulderjohn]

Yes I read the thread, it was operator error. Does it matter if it was a hardware failure, operator error or a software problem? The end result is the same, the computer could not get him back to the surface safely and he had no plan B. If he had the tables with him and knew how to use them he would have had a plan B. If he was never taught how to use them then that option did not exist for him. Even if the OP were diving with two computers in this case it probably would not have helped. If he made every dive with identical computers dialed into the same setting what are the odds that he would have changed both batteries at the same time? I think those odds would have been about 100%.

The incident was just to opposite of what I put in bold in your quote. The computer could get him to the surface, but he chose to ignore and invent a plan B.

Why do you keep insisting there was something wrong with the computer? There was nothing wrong with the computer. It worked fine.

---------- Post added April 12th, 2015 at 08:34 AM ----------

When you throw a ton of information at a student who has absolutely no context of what is important, either it all becomes important, or none of it does. How can they know what they need to know if no one tells them?

That is the difference between reading the manual, which presents a ton of unfiltered information to the student in a format that is often barely understandable, and a course taht teaches how to use a computer in a dive. Such a class teaches what the important functions are and how they are used.

---------- Post added April 12th, 2015 at 08:36 AM ----------

I don't rail against online instruction, I have a Bachelor's degree I obtained that way. I got a 3.98. I test well. I didn't learn as much information in my online bachelors degree, which I completed in 9 months forced march as I did in 4 years of lectures, but both methods resulted in a sheepskin in my name. I didn't get nearly as good a grades in a 4 year program as I did in the 9 month program, in fact, I barely got out, but I did graduate.

i can still recite the neutron life cycle, tell you all about heat transfer across the reactor core, etc., because I was given the time to learn the material. I can't tell you much about environmental science, but I have a degree in it.

I used to teach how to do online instruction. I was the curriculum director who designed the online curriculum for the largest supplier of high school online education in the world. The difference between online education programs is enormous. In general, the typical college online programs are as bad as it gets.

 

[Wookie]

I used to teach how to do online instruction. I was the curriculum director who designed the online curriculum for the largest supplier of high school online education in the world. The difference between online education programs is enormous. In general, the typical college online programs are as bad as it gets.

I get that, and you are a professional educator, and my go to guy when I bang my head against the wall and wonder what happened to making scuba divers, but you are the high end of the bell curve, and unfortunately, you don't train all of the scuba divers in the world.

What are we supposed to do with the product of the middle and the lower end of the curve, the ones who aren't professional educators (I guess you could make a case that a OWSI is a professional educator, but folks with PhD's in education might balk at the designation)? Sure, I'd happily perform a referral for one of your students. But a problem I see is that we are creating instructors who don't know what is really important, so they can't emphasize that info to their students. But they meet all of the requirements to be scuba instructors. Is that because they are excellent educators, or is it because the program is as close to infallible as it gets, or is it because it really doesn't matter if the instructor is good or not because the course is excellent and intuitive, or is it that diving is safe, so learning anything isn't important?

This diver dove with a bent computer. What instructor taught him that that was OK?

 

[redacted]

The OP has over 1000 dives. It is pretty difficult to draw any connection between the OP's instructor and his current performance.

 

[Wookie]

The OP has over 1000 dives. It is pretty difficult to draw any connection between the OP's instructor and his current performance.

Ummmm. OK. Sure. You must have read it on the internet.

 

[dmoore19]

The original dive was a mistake by the OP, not checking to make sure his computer was set properly. The second dive was pure overconfidence due to having "made the dive before". Hard to blame the instructor for either.

 

[Rich Keller]

Why do you keep insisting there was something wrong with the computer? There was nothing wrong with the computer. It worked fine.

"Did a second dive 1-3/4 hours later to find that my dive computer refused to compute/display deco time because I had violated my deco on the earlier dive and it was only providing depth, bottom time and temperature."

He needed the computer to think for him and it would not do that. It continued to provide him with other information that he had no idea how to use. It was operator error that caused the problem but the result was it stopped doing what he needed it to do. From the OPs perspective it failed even though HE was the one that caused the problem. People like this are too dependent on increasing complicated equipment that they do not fully understand how to use.

 

[RJP]

Ummmm. OK. Sure. You must have read it on the internet.

If the OP ignored his computer... which is more likely :

1.) the OP's instructor told him that it was ok to ignore his computer
2.) the OP ignored whatever his instructor told him about diving w/a computer

---------- Post added April 12th, 2015 at 12:30 PM ----------

He needed the computer to think for him and it would not do that. It continued to provide him with other information that he had no idea how to use. It was operator error that caused the problem but the result was it stopped doing what he needed it to do. From the OPs perspective it failed even though HE was the one that caused the problem.

A computer does not absolve the diver from thinking.

The computer did exactly what it was supposed to do. It tried to get him out of the water on the first dive... and it tried to keep him out of the water for the second dive. Other than emitting a gas during the SI that rendered the OP unconscious for 12 hours I'm not sure what else it could have done.

 

[Wookie]

If the OP ignored his computer... which is more likely :

1.) the OP's instructor told him that it was ok to ignore his computer
2.) the OP ignored whatever his instructor told him about diving w/a computer

3.) He never received instruction in the first place about what the computer was telling him.

I said "This diver dove with a bent computer. What instructor taught him that that was OK?". I did not specify that some instructor, like his OW instructor, or his advanced instructor or his computer diver instructor said it was OK to dive with a bent computer, and the meaning is that there is a gap in instruction, not just the OP's instruction, but it's a global (meaning all, not meaning around the world, but it may mean that too) problem with divers. We (instructors) give them a lackadaisical attitude to diver safety because many of us have a lackadaisical attitude to dive safety ourselves.

I see this whole episode as an instructional problem, or rather, a lack of instructional problem. I did not intend to point my finger at any particular instructor.