Business idea: AquaTutoRs

Intro

I have an idea for a business that I'd like to use this platform to flesh out over time. The concept is to create online lessons (likely videos and worksheets) to teach an audience how to code in R, but specifically for the aquatic sciences field. Let's call it AquaTutoRs for lack of a better name right now. Please leave comments that could help me improve this idea, especially the name, haha. 😅

The Problem

R has become ubiquitous in our field (aquatic sciences) and is viewed as a necessity to effectively work with data of any sort. R is open-source, shareable, and extremely powerful. From my perspective, I would not hire a student coming out of a graduate program to work in our company if they did not have basic R skills (on par with writing well). I don't have the same expectations of someone with only an undergraduate degree; however, therein lies the problem:

Now, I should mention that there are plenty of free, online R resources available given that all the associated software is open-source. One of the best resources online is R for Data Science (2e) by Hadley Wickham, Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel, and Garrett Grolemund. This book is an excellent way to learn R and is especially useful for those who have an understanding of the entire data science process (see diagram from their book below).

BUT, you will not find a single example in the book that represents data you'd see in the aquatic sciences field. Our data are messy! People who collect data routinely have them stored improperly and across many files. As an example, download some data from the U.S. EPA's Water Quality Portal and attempt to make sense of it. Lastly, this book is a lot to read and is clearly geared towards a self-motivated individual who could make it through the hundreds of digital pages.

To summarize:

1. R coding skills are needed for a job in our field, yet these skills are not taught well enough in university programs.
2. While online resources are plentiful, the content is usually broadly applicable and not field-specific.
3. Existing online resources may not be the best way to learn R from scratch for a scientist.

Solution, Products, and Positive Benefits

AquaTutoRs would provide products that solve the problems described above. I would develop an online platform where lessons are hosted and can be individually purchased. Lessons would be specific to the issues that routinely pop up in the aquatic sciences field. For example, an entire lesson could be on Common data problems and how to quality control data. Lessons could be on big picture topics like Where to find publicly available data or focus on small, but important topics like How to make 100 plots in 1 second using loops.

As an additional benefit to customers, lessons would be supplemented with opportunities for tutoring and code review. Perhaps an added benefit of buying a lesson would be that it would come with a free 30-minute one-on-one tutoring session. Additional tutoring sessions would be available as would full code reviews (quality control).

Through this business, I hope to develop an online learning space that would benefit current and future generations of aquatic scientists. The earlier someone understands how to examine, manipulate, and draw conclusions from data, the more powerful their conclusions can be.

Customers

The AquaTutoRs target audience would be any aquatic scientist who does not know how to use R, but four distinct customer groups should be considered:

1. 👨‍🎓Undergraduate students - At this time, undergrads most likely are not being taught R before they graduate. They are expected, however, to use R in graduate school or in a professional job. So, developing coding skills before finishing a bachelor's degree would improve the likelihood of being hired or accepted into a grad program.
2. 👩‍🎓Graduate students - Grad students are likely to develop coding skills during their program, but this is highly dependent on their advisor/professor. My advisor declined my request to take an R course, and instead, suggested I "learn from the other graduate students" which put the burden on others to teach me and left me at a disadvantage. Whereas, a colleague of mine was lucky enough to have his professor pay for a 3-day intensive workshop for him to learn R. Yet, why was he not taught by his department? Either way, neither of us were familiar with how to deal with common data problems or how to properly QC data. Many things could be taught that are useful for future work in the aquatic sciences.
3. 👨‍🔬Career scientists - Scientists who are perhaps more senior and who didn't learn to code while in graduate school are at a disadvantage as new staff come into the workplace with R skills. More generally, if an organization lacks staff with coding skills, then they are behind the times which may be more costly in the future. Teaching coding skills to career scientists would be focused on providing lessons on how to do the tasks they already do more effectively in R.
4. 🏫University departments - Given that university degrees are a prerequisite for any job in the aquatic sciences, it should be on university departments to adequately train their undergraduate and graduate students. Depending on the structure and flexibility of given universities, these departments could request custom lessons that can be implemented within a class or offer to pay for students to take lessons through AquaTutoRs as supplemental learning.

Service Line

Product/services

Services that AquaTutoRs would provide include:

1. Online lesson packets that include instructional videos and supplemental materials. Free tutoring with each online lesson packet purchase.
2. One-on-one and group tutoring
3. Code review and quality control
4. Course development

Pricing structure

This is what I need to work on the most and need to spend some time doing market research. Below are some ideas on costs, but I don't have much to support them.

• Online lesson packets - $25-100
• One-on-one tutoring - $50/hr
• Code review and quality control - $100/hr
• Course development - $100/hr

Marketing and Sales

Market position

There are many ways to learn R for free including 1) lessons published by Posit, 2) YouTube, and 3) online communities. However, none of these are field-specific like AquaTutoRs would be. The only resource similar to my idea is R for Water Resources Data Science, but this is basically equivalent to the resources provided in R for Data Science (2e). R tutors already exist on platforms like Wyzant and some have their own personal websites, but I can't find anyone in our field doing this work.

Growth strategy

My initial goal would be to develop a core curriculum of 3-5 lessons that would be useful to all customer groups. Once a small audience is developed, I would expand into other field-specific topics such as genetics, paleoecology, hydrology, fisheries, etc. Existing customers would be solicited to provide feedback on future lessons. Also, subject experts would be engaged to develop lessons.

Advertisement

Advertisements for AquaTutoRs would include:

1. Word of mouth through existing professional network
2. Advertisement through personal LinkedIn account
3. Advertisements at conferences (initially on bulletin boards, but perhaps tabling in the future)
4. Engaging university departments

That's it! Let me know what you think in the comments!

Cheers!