Welcome

mccoursepack

A beginner-friendly guide to the tools we use in MC 451/501 and how to work with the mccoursepack R package. If you’re brand new, read this page once, then hop to Getting Started in the sidebar.

What this site covers

  • R & RStudio basics (how to work inside a Project)
  • Git & GitHub (saving, versioning, pushing your work)
  • Quarto (rendering .qmd to PDF/HTML)
  • The mccoursepack functions you’ll use every week

Each topic has a short, task-oriented page. No assignment details live here—this is your reference manual.

Quick start: 5 steps

  1. Open RStudio and create (or open) a Project for this course (e.g., Documents/MC451).

  2. Install and load the course package:

    install.packages("pak")
pak::pak("SIM-Lab-SIUE/mccoursepack")
library(mccoursepack)

  3. Run the one-time setup (Quarto, TinyTeX for PDFs, and core R packages):

    mccourse_setup()

  4. See what’s available:

    list_courses()            # e.g., "mc451", "mc501"
list_weeks("mc451")       # e.g., "week_01", "week_02", ...

  5. Copy a week’s scaffold into your Project folder (creates week_XX/):

    download_week("mc451", 1, dest = ".")  # pick any available week

    Open the .qmd inside that week_XX/ folder and Render. (Our templates default to PDF first; HTML is available too.)

Core commands (cheat sheet)

# Load the package each new R session
library(mccoursepack)

# Discover what you can pull
list_courses()
list_weeks("mc451")          # replace with your course id

# Copy materials into your Project
download_week("mc451", 1, dest = ".")

# Open the local folder for a given week in your file browser
open_week(1, dest = ".")

# One-time environment setup (Quarto, TinyTeX, core pkgs)
mccourse_setup()

# Sanity check: what does the package see installed?
mccourse_self_test()

How this site is organized

  • Getting Started — first-time install + Project setup
  • R & RStudio — the everyday workflow inside a Project
  • Git & GitHub — commit/push without drama
  • Quarto — render .qmd to PDF/HTML and fix common hiccups
  • Workflows — repeatable patterns (update package, pull new materials, render, commit)
  • Troubleshooting — fast fixes for the usual suspects
  • Reference — short docs for each exported function

Use the search box in the sidebar to jump straight to what you need.

System notes (read once)

  • Work inside an RStudio Project so file paths “just work.”
  • Quarto renders .qmd files. PDF output requires a LaTeX engine; mccourse_setup() offers to install TinyTeX if you don’t have one.
  • Keep your course folder path short (especially on Windows) to avoid path-length issues.

When you’re stuck

Open Troubleshooting in the sidebar and try the top fixes. If you’re still blocked, include in your help request:

  • your OS, R, and RStudio versions,
  • the exact code you ran,
  • the full error message, and
  • a quick screenshot of your folder layout if paths might be involved.

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Sources used for wording and behavior of tools: Quarto website configuration & rendering (website projects, output-dir, and render controls) :contentReferenceoaicite:0; Quarto PDF output requires a TeX engine (TinyTeX/TeX Live) :contentReferenceoaicite:1; pak for installing packages from GitHub and CRAN :contentReferenceoaicite:2; RStudio Projects concept and benefits :contentReferenceoaicite:3; publishing Quarto sites to GitHub Pages via Actions (for your docs site) :contentReferenceoaicite:4. ::contentReferenceoaicite:5