Diving safety
How preparation, experience and context influence whether a skill is available when it matters.
DiveWithSteini · Research & knowledge
How does knowledge become reliable action?
Diving is practical. Good training can still ask scientific questions about what helps people act calmly and competently underwater.
Focus
Practice, learning and human factors
Learning & transfer
What happens between theory, pool and real water, and why understanding alone does not create confident action.
Human factors
Decisions, uncertainty, help-seeking and the human side of technical and safety-critical situations.
Publications
Traceable evidence, not just claims.
Published work, DOI and status are maintained centrally. Ongoing work is clearly labelled as such.
Warum Virtual Labs pädagogische Akzeptanz brauchen!
Steinhardt, S. C. & Ritter, L.
Wirtschaftsinformatik & Management
The article links technical learning environments with the question of when learners actually accept and use them meaningfully.
DOI →Research should improve training.
That is why it is not a detached academic corner here; it informs training design, feedback and decision practice.
Research
Research instead of assumptions
Diving education still relies heavily on tradition. That is not a criticism; it is a research gap. Sven therefore looks at what actually happens between knowing a procedure and being able to use it when a situation becomes demanding.
190 divers15 in-depth interviews2 diving studies
How divers actually want to learn
A quantitative study of how divers want to learn theory. 407 divers started the survey; 190 complete datasets were analysed.
Flexibility decides.
Learning independently of time and place was the strongest driver of whether divers engaged with digital theory at all.
Buddies outweigh experts.
Recommendations from fellow divers influenced adoption more strongly than expert opinion. Diving is a social learning system.
Enthusiasm is not enough.
Enjoyment alone did not measurably predict learning behaviour. Motivation does not replace structure.
Method & limitation
190 participants from German-speaking countries are not a representative sample, and some scales were statistically weak. The study shows tendencies, not laws.
What happens when a dive goes wrong
Fifteen certified divers reconstructed one critical incident each, from 25 to more than 2,000 logged dives.
Knowledge was rarely the problem.
Most knew the correct procedure. What became unstable was perception, breathing, communication or judgement.
Panic came last.
Before panic came loss of orientation, faster breathing and tunnel attention.
The buddy is part of safety.
A calm buddy could restore orientation and the ability to act; losing that reference could do the opposite.
Experience changes the response.
Experience did not prevent symptoms, but it helped experienced divers stay mentally organised.
What happens afterwards matters.
Debriefing and working through an incident shaped whether it became a better safety routine or lasting fear.
What that means for your course
Three things follow, and they are the reason training here looks the way it does. Skills are revisited under realistic, manageable conditions instead of being ticked off once. The buddy is trained as an active part of your safety — proximity, eye contact, clear roles, and explicit permission to abort. And every demanding dive ends with a real debriefing, because that conversation decides whether the dive made you better or just older.
Background: MSc and MBA, doctoral candidate in business administration, lecturer and module author in vocational IT education, examiner for the German Chamber of Industry and Commerce, external thesis reviewer at two universities. More than 20 years of professional experience in technical education — the same question there as underwater: how does knowledge become reliable action?
Peer-reviewed publication: Steinhardt, S. C., & Ritter, L. (2026). Warum Virtual Labs pädagogische Akzeptanz brauchen! Wirtschaftsinformatik & Management (in German). doi.org/10.1365/s35764-026-00608-2