Designing for Online Teaching Success (DOTS)
The Baylor Learning Design Team in partnership with the Academy for Teaching and Learning has designed the DOTS (Designing for Online Teaching Success) program for doctoral students interested in learning the theory and practice of designing and teaching high quality online courses.
2023 Spring DOTS Registration is is now open!
Facilitating the Spring 2023 certification are:
- Dr. Laine Scales, Professor of Social Work, Baylor Master Teacher,
- Dr. Chris Zakrzewski, Director of Learning Design
- Tyler Mowry, DOTS Graduate Fellow
Fulfills the Category 5 (12 pts.): Self-Directed Study requirement for the Academy of Teaching and Learning/Graduate School TeaCHE Program
Total Time: 20-25 hours over six weeks
Steps to Completion
- Apply to the program – priority acceptance will be granted to fifteen doctoral students. Any remaining open spots will go to Master Students.
- Complete five week-long modules that include a 1-hour online synchronous discussion. These sessions will be held on Mondays at 7:00 pm through Zoom. For description, please see below.
- Session 1: Building Online Community and Connecting with Your Students, March 13th
- Session 2: Mapping your Online Course, March 20th
- Session 3: Organizing Your Course, March 27th
- Session 4: Online Learning Activities, April 3rd
- Session 5: Video from Passive to Active, April 17th
- Showcase your work and share what you learned at the Capstone Celebration (online), Monday, April 24th from 7:00-8:00pm
Who can participate?
The DOTS program is designed for doctoral students, but any remaining spots after doctoral students have enrolled may be offered to masters students. To ensure a quality experience for all we are limiting each cohort to 15 students. Upon completion, participants will earn a Baylor DOTS Digital Badge of Completion through Credly.
How can I register?
If you have questions, please email the Learning Design team at learningdesign@baylor.edu. Otherwise, you can go straight to the registration link: https://baylor.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_bjh3f6PrVs3LEr4
If you are interested, but unable to attend due to the date and time of the sessions, please email us at learningdesign@baylor.edu and we can add you to the wait list for the Fall 2023 DOTS offering.
Can I withdraw from DOTS?
We will accept withdrawals from DOTS up until the first day of classes for the semester DOTS is offered. Due to the limited spots for the DOTS Certificate, we encourage you to complete the program once it starts. If you choose to withdraw after the start of the program, wait-listed graduate students will miss out on the Spring offering.
Module Descriptions
Module 1: Building Online Community and Connecting with Your Students
Connectedness is critically important to student success in online courses. Our online students articulate through annual success surveys how important engagement is to their success. Online engagement manifests itself through four key interactions: instructor to student, student to student, student to content and student to technology. We will explore strategies for building a learning community that promotes connectedness through these four key interactions. As part of this effort, we will create introductory videos that will help establish a culture of engagement and connection in the online classroom.
Module 2: Mapping Your Online Course
Your vision is in place. Now it is time to start organizing your course with a course map. This session will explore the benefits of course maps and how they are the foundation of designing a course. They help us ensure that learning builds and scaffolds throughout the course. As we begin constructing our courses, it is important to understand how to calculate total learning time for your course. Faculty new to online course development often overload or underload their courses causing frustrations for students. We will demonstrate the use of time calculators to ensure that our online courses meet personal and institutional standards.
Module 3: Organizing Your Course
Well organized courses can reduce student stress. It’s our goal to reduce the administrative and cognitive load for students, which allows our students to better focus on learning the content at hand. We will explore strategies for organizing your course that builds upon the work you completed in Modules 1–2. We will discuss the importance of using a consistent course structure, naming conventions and flow that focuses students on mastering the course content.
Module 4: Online Learning Activities
Every course is unique and can be built using a wide variety of learning activities and techniques. However, there are some basic components that are often found in many online courses so this session will introduce you to some of the popular, common ones. We will cover discussion boards and look at what makes for a good topic, what the best practices are for managing the discussion, and how to get students engaged and active in them. Then, we will look at ways to assess learning that go beyond traditional tests. We will provide a rationale for using authentic assessment and provide plenty of ideas.
Module 5: Video - From Passive To Active
Using video in your online course can make it come alive! Video is great for creating instructor presence, delivering lecture content, holding live meetings, facilitating group work, and engaging your students. Through the use of video quizzing techniques, they can become interactive too. We will also dive further into Kaltura and Curriki to explore alternatives and enhancements to screen capturing, along with more robust editing tools and options for captioning.