Hi August,
Thanks for your question. This class focuses only on introductory use of data in Stata and does not cover other programs outside of it. There is a stata command to look at the description of your variables from the dataset you import ("codebook"), however this does not help you manage your codebook, which is what I believe you are asking (correct me if I'm wrong!). More information on this command can be found here: http://www.stata.com/help.cgi?codebook. You will also learn how to manipulate your data in this course (cleaning/renaming/recoding variables).
If you are taking EPI 218 this quarter (database management), you will learn some of the ways to create and manage codebooks using different platforms (Microsoft Access, RedCAP, etc). Many database programs have user-friendly ways to create and manage codebooks. Standards and best practices depend on what platform you are using to collect your data, however generally you want to be as explicit and thorough as possible when developing your study and tools you will use so that you do not have to do a lot of manipulation/changes at the time of your analysis. One way of doing that is to plan out every step of your analysis before you start collecting data, and that will help guide you as to how you should be creating your codebooks/variables.
Hope that helps! Please let us know if you have any other questions.
~Biftu