In my experience, courses like these may have a suggested set of tools that your instructor or TAs have experience with. Did you by chance get any guidance as to the R packages you'll be using?
Failing that, a good place to start would be to check out the existing R packages for aucustic analysis. Many of these packages will then have a vignette to help onboard you to thinks like data loading, and basic usage.
Here's an example, (but note that I don't have experience with sound analysis and so should not be considered an authority)