Lottery Glossary
Curriculum Period: a period of time that defines the beginning and end of a curriculum.
Lottery: a container associated with a specific curriculum period that defines an audience and contains one or more stages.
Audience: the collection of learners that will be scheduled by the lottery processing. The audience is determined by the initial draft schedule that is selected when creating a lottery.
Learner: a single audience member.
Stage: each stage is contained within a parent lottery, and defines the period of time when it will be "open" for the lottery's audience of learners to rank that stage's options, in order of preference. After a lottery has closed, a stage may then be executed, transforming the learners' submitted preferences into partial rotation schedules that are merged into the final working schedule.
Working Schedule: each lottery has its own working copy of a rotation schedule, which is populated through the process of executing stages.
Option Type: options can be created as one of two different types to provide flexibility. The option type to be used is specified when creating a stage:
Sequential: each option created within the stage will consist of a stream of multiple blocks, in varying arrangements.
Singular: each option created within the stage will consist of a single block
Option: an ordering of one or more clerkship blocks, also known as a stream, track, grid, or group. Options are defined by an administrator and later ranked by learners in order of their preference. If a stage is set to “Singular” mode, each option will contain one block, whereas with “Sequential” mode, each option can contain multiple Blocks in varying arrangements.
Ranking: when a stage is open, each learner in the audience is tasked with reviewing the stage's options and submitting their preferred ranking. This list that maps the options to their ordered preferences is a learner's ranking.
Block: defines the specific period of time and optionally, the location(s) where a learner will complete some form of task or content related to a particular course.
Slot: a slot defines the site and occupancy spaces available for a block. Blocks can have multiple slots, each of which may define their own minimum and maximum number of spaces.
Space: represents an actual vacancy within a slot, and serves as the link that allows learners to be assigned to a specific rotation within a schedule.
Site: the physical location where a rotation takes place. Each block within an option may specify one or more sites where the rotation may occur.
Variation: a variation is the result of an executed stage. Each variation represents a partial rotation schedule that the admin can review and adjust, or merge into the lottery's working schedule.
Satisfaction Rating: this is a percentage rating value that shows how close a variation was to the ideal scenario, where every learner received their top choice. The higher this value, the higher the number of learners who received their preferred option.