General terms and conditions for onsite and online courses

1. Our courses are designed for applied scientists (e.g. biologists, environmental scientists, medical scientists) and we will only discuss concepts; no detailed mathematics. As such, our courses are less suitable for statisticians who wish to learn all the mathematical details.
2. The course literature is copyright protected and may not be reproduced or distributed without permission.  
3. The course content might be modified or improved prior to the course start date. 
4. In most courses, we are able to cover all advertised modules. Unexpected factors like power cuts, food poisoning, snowstorms, airline strikes, etc. may slow us down. Occasionally the numerical knowledge of the participants is slightly lower than expected. We will do our best to cover all modules, but sometimes this is not possible. No refund will be given if we cannot cover all modules.
5. Accommodation, lunch, and tea/coffee are not included as part of the course fee and participants are expected to make their own arrangements. 
6. A course participant can be substituted at any time before the start of the course. 
7. Although we have never canceled a course, we reserve the right to cancel a course without liability other than a refund of the full course fee. 
8. In case a small number of participants sign up, we may decide to send only one instructor.
9. Unfortunately, we cannot assist with VISA applications.
10. For specific courses, we reserve the right to accommodate for a small number of online participants. The course fee for online participation is the same as the advertised onsite costs.
11. Some of our courses contain a 1-hour face-to-face consultancy session. To ensure that you get the maximum out of the 1-hour face-to-face chat, we have drafted some key points.
    
    • We will provide a Zoom link for this meeting. The meeting will not be recorded.
    • Please ensure that you are familiar with screen sharing facilities in Zoom (we will make you co-host so that you can share your screen, at which point you may need to disable some privacy and security settings).
    • Quite often we schedule 2 meetings in a row. As such, there is no flexibility to extend the meeting beyond 1 hour. Please note that the 1-hour chat is not transferable to another person. The meeting is for 1 individual and not for multiple people (groups).
    • The 1-hour face-to-face chat does not include any of our time for preparation. This is to avoid that people send script files with thousands of lines of R code before a meeting or a 50-page Word document. You will need to explain everything during the meeting. Please try to explain your data and questions as simply as possible. Use pictures, diagrams, videos, etc. The easier you can explain your data, the more you get out of the meeting.  Our advice is based on the information that you provide. If you cannot properly and efficiently explain your experimental design or the setup of your field study, then we may not be able to provide the correct advice. Please have a look at the 10-step protocol in our 2016 paper. It will help you to structure your questions.
    • If you want to cancel or reschedule the meeting, please let us know 24 hours before the meeting. We will give you a new slot, but we cannot guarantee short-term availability. If you cancel within 24 hours of the meeting (without a very good reason), then you lose the slot and we will not offer you a new slot.
    • If you do not ‘turn up’ for the online meeting without informing us before the meeting (which has happened a couple of times), we will wait 15 minutes before closing the meeting. We will not provide a new slot. For a time zones converter, see: https://www.timeanddate.com/
    • During the 1-hour face-to-face consultancy session, you can ask any question that you want, e.g. about your own data. However, our statistical expertise mainly covers the topics described on the course website. Note that no refund will be given if your questions are outside our field of expertise, or if we cannot help you.