Teaching Dive Tables (including Nitrox)

[Eric Sedletzky]

They have their own.

Are they based on the DSAT RDP science, or the US Navy tables?

 

[boulderjohn]

Are they based on the DSAT RDP science, or the US Navy tables?

I believe the US Navy.

 

[Mr_D]

When I was last teaching SSI still included the tables in the OW material, we also had formal class academics that consisted of a few hours a night during the week or all day on a Sat.

Fast forward a dozen years and I was in the LDS that is PADI and was talking to the counter lady and we got on the subject of training, I learned that class academics and dive tables are a thing of the past. All eLearning and dive computers.

From what I understand (talking to her) you just do the eLearning and show up at the LDS and the Instructor will go over how to use a computer than it's off to the pool for skill work.

Also appears the LDS doesn't sell course work in-house; the perspective student goes out to the agency website and purchases the course and is then affiliated with a LDS based on the students address.

Times have changed for sure.

 

[The Chairman]

Times have changed for sure.

Thank goodness!!!

 

[pdwh]

I just did my SSI open water in May/June and we did cover tables and how to use them for consecutive dives, etc.

 

[Valeriy_Kulaha]

Most instructional theorists would disagree.

In good curriculum design, you identify the essential learnings and make them the focus of the course. You identify the things that are good to know and give them secondary focus. Things that are nice to know are given the least focus.

Most importantly, you identify what is not needed, and you eliminate it. Time spent learning things that are not needed detracts from the student's ability to learn what is important. This is called interference theory.

How to stay alive during a dive and not get decompression sickness - is this unnecessary and unnecessary for a student? The computer knows everything? And if the computer goes out at depth, then we are all mortal.
Thus, pedagogy turns from science into charlatanism.

 

[Valeriy_Kulaha]

SSI does not teach tables in OW. I recently completed SSI AI and the only mention of tables in the OW materials that I recall is in the section about using dive computers. The main point is that a properly used computer is safer than tables and calculates multilevel dives better than tables, allowing for more bottom time and more accurate NDL. I incorporated this point into one of my classroom presentations for the AI course and the feedback I was given after a practice presentation was to completely eliminate any reference to tables. The students will have no idea what I'm talking about, so don't mention them. He wasn't wrong.

If there's time during OW, an SSI instructor may incorporate tables into the course if they wish.

Last year when I took Dive Guide I had three classmates, all of whom had fewer than 100 dives and had been certified within the last 5 years, IIRC. Only one had ever looked at a table before. Two didn't know they existed before we used them for about 30 mins during a classroom session.

The SSI Enriched Air course focuses on using a computer with a reference to tables, noting that the tables can be taught at the instructor discretion. Slide rules are one comparison. So are trig tables with the ratios for sine, cosine, and tangent. We just push the button on a calculator when we use those.

Bravo! I propose to abolish the study of mathematics in schools. Calculators are cheap, and the salaries of mathematics professors are high!

 

[Valeriy_Kulaha]

Thank goodness!!!

Long live natural selection!

 

[boulderjohn]

How to stay alive during a dive and not get decompression sickness - is this unnecessary and unnecessary for a student? The computer knows everything? And if the computer goes out at depth, then we are all mortal.
Thus, pedagogy turns from science into charlatanism.

If a computer goes out at depth, you do not die. You call the dive and begin an ascent. I honestly don't understand the rest of your post.

 

[boulderjohn]

Bravo! I propose to abolish the study of mathematics in schools. Calculators are cheap, and the salaries of mathematics professors are high!

Mathematics is a topic with many subtopics. Understanding those subtopics is important for all. One of the subtopics is automaticity, the ability to make rapid calculations in the head. Another is estimation, the ability to get a rough idea of the results of a calculation without the need to do the actual calculation. Both of those skills are used regularly to avoid the need for a calculator. Those are only two examples of the teaching of mathematics.