Dr. Amanda Hillard:
A Focus on Group Projects

Dr. Amanda Hilliard teaches 661.110: Professional Writing and Communication along with other courses at the Whiting School of Engineering Center for Education Leadership. Hilliard taught writing and communication courses abroad in South Korea, Vietnam, and Ecuador, and in the U.S. in Georgia, Texas, and Arizona before joining the Whiting School. She aims to help students communicate effectively for the diverse audiences in today’s increasingly multicultural, globalized, and digital world.

During the Faculty Forward Fellowship program, Hillard decided to focus on group projects. The group project in her course revolves around creating a presentation and writing a report for a grant proposal. Since it’s difficult to find a real grant that fits the semester-long course requirements, the project is based around a fictional grant application.

Hilliard will address this problem by adjusting the group project to include more accountability and a focus on accessibility/inclusivity. For accountability, in addition to a midpoint evaluation of group member’s contributions, Hilliard says, “I plan to add another assignment to accompany the final report. For this new assignment, students will need to reflect on their own contributions and evaluate their group members.” Additionally, there has been a focus on visual design, but not accessibility in the design. So, she plans to discuss accessibility in one of the classes and add a revision assignment where groups reflect on one of their visual products and make improvements for accessibility/inclusivity.

Hilliard is ambitious in her timeline for implementation and hopes to accomplish her goals for the course this fall. She also plans to invite guest speakers to speak and judge projects and gather feedback from her students on how the changes were received in the fall term of 2021.

Hilliard can be contacted at [email protected] if you would like to learn more.

The faculty featured in this issue collaborated with their colleagues during the Faculty Forward Fellowship to identify specific problems of practice, a plan for implementation, and a timeline to put their plans into practice during the program.

Consider applying to the 2022 cohort if you are interested in learning more about best practices and the science of teaching and learning and exploring ways to engage and motivate students. The application is available at https://facultyforward.jhu.edu/faculty-forward-application/.