Remote access to the Raspberry Pi will avoid to connect the Keyboard, Mouse and HDMI cables. Setup time will drop and you will have more time to work towards your project 2.
The first access will be performed using SSH or remote secure shell. This will give you a command prompt. You will have to download the vSSH lite app on the app store or an equivalent.
Make sure you know the IP address of the RPI that has been offered by the server distributing those addresses when you connected the RPI using the WLAN dongle. You have to be on the same “Student” WLAN network for this to work. The IP address might change but you will notice this quickly as the access will not work anymore. The username and password are “pi” and “raspberry” once you are asked for the login credentials.