Howdy biologists! Massive news.
February 2025, I was set to run a R for Biologists workshop. This was a workshop I had planned for years, but only recently had the timeframe to plan, advertise, and execute a 3 week workshop. Last week was meant to be the last major marketing push for the workshop. However, on Monday an executive order pausing federal funding sent the US scientific community into a panic.
50% of my audience is from the United States. Yet, 3 weeks into a marketing campaign, I had 0 enrollments from my home country. This is not meant to shame anyone, rather I think its indicative of science funding in the United States. On Wednesday, I cancelled the workshop posting this on Instagram.
I also have a youtube video where I go more in depth.
Its time to make like a population, and adapt
TL;DR: Learn Adventurously will be operating under a membership model called the Learn Adventurously Bioclub (the LAB). This article will cover the benefits of doing so, why I am making this change, and the other changes it will bring. I will be updating this webpage with specific changes as I make them.
Expected Completion: March 2025
Know first when the lab opens:Email(Required)
Further Context: Learn Adventurously
My goal with Learn Adventurously is to create an educational platform that:
A) Contains courses and workshops for biologists, nature professionals, and self-learners
B) Coordinates live experiences (e.g. Workshops, Belize trips, BioBlitzes)
C) Engages in biodiversity research to pair with the educational material.
Currently, I have achieved the minimum viable products for all of the goals. Somehow, I’ve even made a 3 figure profit over these years!
In November, I went full time with Learn Adventurously and quickly poured my effort into the Reading Phylogenies course and the Workshop. However, with the increased focused, time since prior changes, and seeing a lackluster course launch a few issues came to light.
The last major change to Learn Adventurously converted my courses into programs comprised of smaller, more approachable courses. This was to address the courses being A) too long and B) at an awkward price point. While building the biostatistics course, I found that it needed to be far shorter than the R course and I struggled with how to price this. Additionally, the R course was meant to be completed over 6 weeks, but that led to a giant course. I found this was difficult for students to manage and it slowed the website dramatically.
I split the courses into segments, and priced each at $35 usd. My rationale being that students who only want one set of lessons, can purchase them for $35, instead of the program at $170. The program price then simply reflects the number of courses, with a flat 20% discount for buying the bundle. Splitting was necessary to fit into longer goals of creating custom programs that include a selection of lessons from various courses. For example, a program covering how to visualize ANOVA results, may want the ggplot2 course from Fundamentals of R and the Common statistical tests course from Fundamental Biostatistics.
But as with any decision this introduced issues.
1. It offered a fair price for the smaller programs (~65-80usd without sales), but inflated the larger programs like Fundamentals of R. (Now $170 with the discount).
2. While I thought it it would help students who only want a few lessons, I found nobody ended up buying them!
3. It was a pain to setup on the website, it made the course dashboard overwhelming, and navigation within programs was severely lacking.
What the Workshop Exposed
Then the workshop came. I’ve had this workshop planned for years. The biggest draw in my opinion, was that it includes the self-paced course. But this turned out to be a negative.
When I first planned the workshop, I ran with the course price +$100usd. But when I went to advertise, this meant a workshop between $270 and $350. That price point was far below a university course and similar size workshops I’ve seen. I 100% believe it was worth the value but I received numerous messages along these veins: “That workshop looks amazing but its not in the budget this year.”
It was clear it wasn’t a value issue, it was a barrier to entry issue. Its not that my core demographic couldn’t buy it, in fact several did and had planned to before I canceled. Its that my price point was too many standard deviations away from the mean of my core demographic. Then I asked myself, “Would I have purchased this workshop in grad school?”. And the answer is no.
In fact, when I look across all my offerings, 3 programs, 15+ courses, and a workshop, students were already looking to pay ~$400-500 usd to access all of them. This is already too large of a barrier and I am only going to add more courses. Each of these little steps, led my business to prioritize fewer students for larger sales. However, that isn’t what I intended, nor do I want that to be my model for an educational platform.
Benefits of a Subscription Model
A subscription based platform changes my model to more students at a lower rate. While I know subscriptions are everywhere, this is 100% the correct move for my business. Below I will list the specific benefits it brings for you, for Learn Adventurously, and for me.
- For You: I plan my most expensive membership to be $10. For my 3 programs running between $80 and $170 each, you would have to be subscribed for 4 years for the value to equalize. That is actually older than Learn Adventurously!
- For You: Students anywhere in the world can access all of the material, for under $10.
- For You: Workshops can be reduced in price. I can rerun R for Biologists workshop for $100 for members only!
- For You: Easier to lower price for nonprofits, low-income biologists, and organizations.
- For you: Free courses are easier to offer.
- For LEAD: As I increase my course catalog it only increases in value.
- For LEAD: Lets me make a central hub for our events.
- For LEAD: Aligns extremely well with long term goals.
- For Me: My marketing is massively simplified. With 15 courses, it quickly became difficult to market each.
- For Me: Cuts down tremendously on my backend tasks to make the course and the product page live.
- For Me: Reduces the number of webpages I need to maintain
These are a variety of major benefits and truthfully, there aren’t many downsides.
Why didn’t I make the change earlier?
I’ve known about this issue but didn’t make the change for a variety of reasons. Most of these are simply to the the time investment needed to fully convert it over.
- Value: When I only had 1 or 2 courses, there wasn’t much value in a subscription.
- Up Front Costs: Initial research needed around ~$500 in new plugins and ~80 work hours to implement and test.
- Subscription timing: Many of my major plugins renew in November. I would lose ~$400, by not using plugins I already purchased an annual license for. This is why I meant to implement this change in November 2025, so I could also assess all my plugins after building several more courses.
- Honoring my commitment to those that bought the courses: I promised lifetime access to the course and I plan to honor that. I just needed to figure out how.
- Courses need a refresh: The courses have needed a a reread for errors and dead links. They’ve been transferred between domains, split into smaller courses, and implemented in different ways over the years. I want them to be consistent and finalized before a conversion to subscription.
- Programs need a rework: I believe the programs are an effective tool, but they needed to be reworked to make them clearer for students and easier to navigate.
- Massive changes to websites: This would fundamentally alter how the website is structured, resulting in long down time as I implement the changes.
- Website needs a shakedown: The backend for this website is abysmally slow. Unfortunately, there are some redundant plugins and band-aid fixes that are affecting the overall speed of the website. Many of these are because of how the courses are currently sold and the only solution is to more or less rebuild the entire website.
- The workshop was already underway: Many of these problems were highlighted after I started advertising for the workshop. The small things I could’ve fixed were realized too late.
- Schedule was already filled: February was for the workshop. In March I’m traveling to my grandparents in Europe and taking a much earned vacation. I’ve been working hard on planning a major BioBlitz in April. Realistically, the earliest I could start this was May or June. Time I usually reserve for field work!
With all this in mind, my plan was to cut back on creating new courses while I fix the website and other issues first. During that time id I plan out this transition and implement when my old subscriptions expires. Might as well save a few hundred dollars!
However, those aforementioned issues became far too impactful while building this workshop. I believe I owe it to all my past, present, and future students to make my material financially accessible as soon as possible. The current political climate and the massive inequalities and barriers of our world are preventing knowledge from reaching millions of would be naturalists. These are skills, concepts, and techniques we need to save the world’s biodiversity, understand our most incredible ecosystems, and uncover the stories of evolution millions of years in the making!
What this means
I am immediately implementing the Learn Adventurously Bioclub (The LAB). The premier membership platform designed to help you understand the world around us.
Looking at that timeline, my goal is to work all of February on this transition. Instead of the workshop, I am putting 100% of my focus into this project. I plan to finish it completely by the end of February. Since the cancellation on Wednesday, I have been deep in a staging site trying different plugin combinations, reworking the web navigation, and basically rebuilding the website from the ground up.
Here is the list of new updates, changes, and information. I will keep this updated as I continue to make changes. The most impactful and important are at the top of the list.
Important Updates
Note: Images will come once I convert from the staging site to the live site.
Membership site:
Learn Adventurously will move to a membership site with a monthly subscription. Standard pricing will likely be $10 per month on a monthly plan and $7 a month on a yearly plan. I am looking into implementing a free trial as well. I have already implemented the membership plugins and will soon be making a membership program.
What will Membership get you?
Learn Adventurously has a variety of free media including the library, webinars, some courses, and event attendance. Additionally, we coordinate some events and workshops that require an extra charge to make financially viable. Now, events are prorated by the collective membership and can be charged at a much lower price. For example, the R workshop will relaunch at $100 for members, instead of $270, while an upcoming event I have planned, may only require a $10 ticket.
The following shows what everyone can access for free, what members can access with just their subscription, and what members can access with an additional ticket. Events with an additional ticket:
- Everyone: All resources and tools in the library, past webinar recaps, some courses, some event access
- Members: All courses and programs, Library downloads without popups, live monthly webinars, Members event access
- Ticketed: Live workshops and courses, Ticket only event access,
What if you already bought a course?
If you already bought a course, I am still honoring the lifetime updates and access commitment. I will move the courses you already purchased onto a page where you can access them until the sun burns out! They should still be linked to courses in the subscription side, so any changes I make there will translate over.
I will also be giving everyone enrolled in my courses a free 3 months subscription to the new Learn Adventurously Bioclub.
Downtime and restricted pages
I am reaching the point where I need to start locking down the website and implementing changes. As such, there may be periods where courses are inaccessible. I expect the library to not be impacted during most of this change.
Core updates
New Program navigation
I have reworked how courses and programs interact. Each program will consist of a single page and a final Mastery check. On that page, I made blocks that show you what courses you need to complete, in a suggested order. This should make navigation much easier.
An additional benefit, is that it keeps a record if you completed that course under a different program. For example, in a future “advanced visualizations in ggplot2” program, it will register that you already completed the “Intro to ggplot2” course also found in fundamentals of R. This was another issue with pricing courses the old way that is solved by subscriptions. Long term, this will make for some awesome long term learning!
New course access
Because you have access to all courses, I no longer need to show you only your enrolled courses. I can completely ditch the dashboard. The dashboard was needed, but it unfortunately doesn’t work well with the volume of courses we have. And it offers very limited design capabilities.
Instead, you can find all the programs and courses on a single page! Paired with the new program organization, this will make accessing and completing your courses far less confusing.
Website speed improvements
I have removed about a dozen plugins that were necessary under the previous course pricing model. Adding the membership has already paid for itself by removing 4 pro subscriptions. Additionally, I have spent the time to build new webpages that are more responsive. Its already created a massive improvement on backend speed, which will make this transition much easier. Additionally, It will improve the speed I can build courses, as website delays were a major barrier.
Improving the courses
As I change each course to the new subscription model, I will go through and update links, check over for any grammar errors, and overall give each course a spruce up. I want them to be perfect for when the site launches!
We’re going to dark theme
I used to have a dark mode plugin, but it created far too many conflicts. I think these high contrast screens are terrible for our vision. To make things worse, I actually have a light sensitivity! I am going to switch the default theme to a dark mode. I just need to do some research on accessible color schemes and contrast amounts.
Eventually ill add a light mode switch, but everything I use is in dark mode. My business should be too!
What are these live events you mention?
I mentioned that some live events are open to everyone, some only to members, and some need a ticket. Lets give some concrete examples. Heres a couple pitches with prices
- A monthly live 1-hr webinar that covers island biogeography theory and provides exclusive access for questions and answers. The price is free for members, as it is already covered in their collective monthly subscription. This webinar recap is then transferred to the library where it becomes free for everyone.
- A 3 month case study where we run a common garden experiment. The ticket price gets you access to live weekly updates as we develop a self-paced course in real time alongside the experiment. This ticket price would be $10usd as we want as many people to interact with this project as possible to provide feedback and create better educational material. However, I don’t need to do as much personal instruction.
- An intensive 3 week workshop where I have 9x 60 min lectures and a mini project designed to teach you R. This workshop uses the material in the self-paced courses, but gets you access to live instruction, help with your code, and access to an instructor. This ticket price would be $100usd as I am providing intense instruction over a condensed period of time. However, I can offer this workshop at a low price, due to the members who are not attending, but still contribute with a monthly subscription.
- A global bioblitz with a custom scoring system. Similar to BioBlitzes in the past! For this anyone (even non-members) can join and there will be a free course for everyone to interact with. There’s where I explain the rules, provide additional information, and resources to help people find biodiversity in their area. After the event, that course would then be members exclusive.
During the event, members can purchase a pay what you want ticket for an exclusive course where I provide live updates on the competition and give more behind the scenes look at my finds. In reality, this ticket provides direct support for making the event happen and I can be as low as a single dollar.
Fixing course structure
During the restoration of legacy courses, I discovered 2 programs had actually been duplicated by accident. The lessons in the courses are able to be shared between courses. So for example, if I made an update in “Intro to Tidyverse” it would update the same lesson in the “Fundamentals of R for Biologists” program.
This is embarrassing, but it was the cause of issues over the years. I thought I would fix a typo, only to find later that it hadn’t been fixed. I thought it was a WordPress issue, but turns out it was 100% my fault. This has been resolved and now lessons are linked.
Eliminating Post Bloat
The aforementioned issue made for a good opportunity to clean out all the lessons, topics, and quizzes, which were not associated with any courses. Alongside the duplicated topics, there are a variety that have been removed, accidentally created and thus were empty, or made obsolete as the site has been updated.
Approximately 40% of my topics were in this category (largely duplicates) as well as an additional 15% of lessons and 10% of quizzes. About 150 total topics, lessons, and quizzes were purged. This should help speed up load times!