Getting Started

Welcome! Follow these steps once to prepare your computer and confirm everything works with mccoursepack.
After this, your weekly rhythm lives on the Workflows page.

1) Install prerequisites

Prefer automation? Step 4’s mccourse_setup() can install Quarto and TinyTeX automatically.
Rtools must still be installed manually on Windows.

2) Create your course folder + RStudio Project

  1. Make a folder, e.g. 
    • Windows: Documents\MC451 or Documents\MC501
    • macOS: Documents/MC451 or Documents/MC501
  2. In RStudio:
    File → New Project → New Directory → New Project
    Name it MC451 (or MC501) and place it in Documents.

Projects keep paths stable and reproducible.

3) Install and load the course package

In the RStudio Console:

install.packages("pak")                              # once per machine
pak::pak("SIM-Lab-SIUE/mccoursepack")
library(mccoursepack)                                # load each session
packageVersion("mccoursepack")

Fallback if pak isn’t available:

install.packages("remotes")
remotes::install_github("SIM-Lab-SIUE/mccoursepack", upgrade = "always", force = TRUE)
library(mccoursepack)

4) Run the one-time setup helper

mccourse_setup()   # safe to re-run; installs only what’s missing

This ensures:

  • Quarto is installed (engine for .qmd)
  • TinyTeX is installed (LaTeX for PDF)
  • Core CRAN packages are available

5) Verify the toolchain

system("quarto --version")     # Quarto?
system("git --version")        # Git?
if (requireNamespace("tinytex", quietly = TRUE)) tinytex::is_tinytex()  # TinyTeX?

If anything is missing, re-run mccourse_setup() and restart RStudio.

6) Pull your first week scaffold (sanity check)

list_courses()                          # installed courses
list_weeks("mc451")                     # week folders
download_week("mc451", week = 1, dest = ".")

Open week_01/, edit the .qmd, and click Render (PDF or HTML). This confirms the package + Quarto toolchain work.

7) Pull the Journal (Quarto book)

download_journal("mc451", dest = ".")   # or "mc501"

This creates a journal/ folder with:

journal/
  _quarto.yml
  index.qmd
  entry_template.qmd
  entries/
  scripts/
  prompts_mc451.csv
  assets/
  • MC 451 entries: 250–300 words
  • MC 501 entries: 450–500 words
  • Each chapter shows 3 prompts → answer exactly one
  • Word counter (when rendered) checks your range

8) Add your first journal entry

From inside journal/:

source("scripts/new_journal_entry.R")

This creates entries/YYYY-MM-DD.qmd, inserts prompts, sets the word-count range, and updates _quarto.yml. Open it, write your response, and render.

9) Render outputs

  • Week files: open .qmd inside week_XX/ → Render
  • Journal book: open journal/ → Render, or run:
quarto render

Output is written to journal/_book/.

10) Optional: connect Git/GitHub

  • In RStudio: Tools → Global Options → Git/SVN → check Git detection
  • Sign in at https://github.com/
  • Use the Git pane: Stage → Commit → Push

Journal note: when you add a chapter, commit both the new file and journal/_quarto.yml.

Quick fixes

  • Quarto not found → install Quarto or run mccourse_setup(), then restart
  • PDF render fails → mccourse_setup() to install TinyTeX
  • Files missing → confirm you’re inside the Project (getwd()), re-run download_week()/download_journal()
  • New journal entry not listed → commit the updated _quarto.yml and re-render
  • Word count out of range → check MC 451 (250–300) vs MC 501 (450–500); only the Response is counted
  • Windows build error (“Could not find tools necessary to compile a package”) → install Rtools and restart

✅ After this page, move on to Weekly Workflows for your every-week routine.