In this course I expect some familiarity with R Markdown. Only the basics!
I use the usethis package a lot 🤖 ✨, and recommend doing so. Follow usethis setup article in particular “Use usethis or devtools in interactive work” and the Git/GitHub stuff.
If you use GitLab, not GitHub, you can follow Heidi Seibold’s instructions “Setup Git RStudio GitLab”. There is no helper similar to usethis::use_github() to my knowledge.
You should be able to follow the course and manage a blog without any git knowledge. Now for later, if you feel curious about version control, I’d recommend checking out happygitwithr.com by Jenny Bryan, the STAT 545 TAs, Jim Hester; Suzan Baert’s blog post about git and “Excuse me, do you have a moment to talk about version control?" by Jenny Bryan.