Course Workflow

Week-by-week rhythm of the course.

At a glance (diagram)

0) Open your Project

Always begin inside your course RStudio Project (open the .Rproj). Projects keep paths stable and reproducible.

1) Update the package each week

pak::pak("SIM-Lab-SIUE/mccoursepack") # get latest version
library(mccoursepack) # load for this session

If a render fails with Quarto/TinyTeX errors, you can re-run:

mccourse_setup()   # safe anytime; only installs missing pieces

2) Pull this week’s scaffold

list_weeks("mc451")          # or "mc501" to see available weeks
download_week("mc451", N, dest = ".")   # replace N with week number
open_week(N, dest = ".")                # optional: opens folder

This creates ./week_0N/. Open the .qmd inside and click Render (PDF or HTML).

3) Write your journal entry

At the end of each week, add a dated chapter to your journal book:

setwd("journal")                   # go inside journal folder
source("scripts/new_journal_entry.R")

This creates a file like entries/mc451_week07_2025-09-24.qmd (with your course, week/chapter, and date in the filename) containing three prompts. Answer exactly one, staying in your word range:

The YAML header in each entry includes:

---
title: "Journal Entry"
course: "mc451"
week: "07"
date: "2025-09-24"
full_date: "September 24, 2025"
---
  • MC 451: 250-300 words
  • MC 501: 450-500 words

Then render the journal:

quarto render

Outputs appear under journal/_book/.

4) Submit your work (GitHub)

Use RStudio’s Git pane or the command line. Each week:

  1. Pull to sync with GitHub
  2. Stage the files you changed
  3. Commit with a short message
  4. Push to GitHub

Command line:

git pull
git add -A
git commit -m "Week N journal + assignment"
git push

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

Quick checklist (each week)

NoteMaintainers only

If you’re editing the documentation site (site/):

quarto preview site     # live preview
git add -A
git commit -m "docs: expand troubleshooting & reference"
git push

GitHub Actions will render and deploy to Pages automatically.