Elentra's Lottery module is designed to streamline the process of generating a rotation schedule for the clinical portion of the curriculum. The module provides administrators with the ability to create, manage, and configure lotteries, while also providing learners with the opportunity to provide feedback by ranking and submitting their preferences. Each lottery incorporates its learners' preferences into a processing algorithm, which can be run one or more times, with each variation creating a draft schedule that tracks the level of calculated learner satisfaction. Resultant draft schedules may then be compared based on their learner satisfaction scores and manually edited as needed, and once an administrator has reviewed their chosen draft schedule, it can be published as the finalized schedule.
The following is a high-level example of the process an organization may go through when configuring and running a lottery using the Elentra module.
Create a Lottery for a specified curriculum period, providing a title and visibility date, then selecting a draft schedule to determine its audience and available rotations.
Schedule a Stage within the created Lottery by setting the date and time when it should be available to learners to provide their preferences.
Create a series of Options for the Stage, one for each different arrangement of scheduled rotations.
The scheduled Stage opens on its specified date and time.
While the Stage is open, each learner logs in and ranks the Options in order of which ones they prefer the most.
The Stage closes on its specified closing date and time.
The Stage is then manually executed with a set number of variations. For each variation, a potential draft schedule is generated, incorporating the learners' ranked preferences and schedule availability.
The variations are reviewed to determine which is the most viable, with the highest learner satisfaction. The chosen variation is merged into the Lottery's working schedule.
The Lottery's working draft schedule is reviewed and published.
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 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.
Each lottery is directly associated with a curriculum period. This helps to refine the scope of the lottery and the available learners that can be assigned to its audience.
Navigate to Admin > Clinical Experience.
Click the ‘Lotteries’ button under the heading.
The Lottery module will load with the most recent curriculum period pre-selected. If you would like to change the curriculum period, simply click on the input field to the right of the heading and select one of the other available curriculum periods from the drop-down list.
Click the ‘Add Lottery’ button.
Adding Lottery
Provide a title for the lottery. This should be something descriptive, especially if you’re going to create more than one lottery. You will be able to edit the title later if you need to change it.
Once you've entered a title, click the ‘Proceed’ button at the top right of the card to move on to the next step - defining the audience.
Defining Audience
The audience consists of any number of learners, who can be included individually or as a group, from any number of cohorts. Click ‘Select a Cohort’ to view all cohorts available within the curriculum period and choose one.
After selecting the cohort, if it contains learners, two options will become enabled: adding all users in a cohort or manually adding individual learners.
The ‘Add All (XX)’ button will add all learners within the cohort to your defined audience with one click. The parentheses on the button label displays a count of how many learners will be added with this action.
Clicking the input directly below the cohort selector, ‘Manually add Learners from XXXX’ will allow you to add individual learners from that cohort to your audience.
If you click the manual option, this opens up the manual learner selection pane.
You can scroll through the list or use the ‘Search Audience’ field to refine the results and find specific learners. The search field will filter results based on either first or last name matches.
To add an individual learner, click the ‘Add’ button to the right of their name. The ‘Add’ button will become disabled and the appropriate learner will be added to your defined audience list displayed below.
As you add learners to your audience, either manually or by clicking the ‘Add All (XX)’ button, your defined audience list will be displayed at the bottom of the card. For any of the learners in your defined audience list, you can click the ‘Remove’ button to remove them from your defined audience, which will also re-enable their ‘Add’ button in their respective cohort.
As long as at least one learner is included in your defined audience, the ‘Confirm’ button at the bottom right of the form card will be enabled. Click ‘Confirm’ to finalize the creation of your new lottery.
From a stage, click 'Manage Selections'.
Click ‘Add New Selection’ to create one or more blocks.
If the parent stage that the selection is created under is set to ‘Singular’, only one block may be added to the selection.
After clicking the ‘Add New Selection’ button, you can then specify the desired ‘Course’, ‘Length’, and ‘Rotation’ for the block, then click the ‘Finish’ button to save the block to the selection. The ‘Length’ field requires a value for ‘Course’, and ‘Rotation’ requires a value for ‘Length’.
This information is being pulled from the rotations built for a course in Clinical Experiences > Rotation Schedule. If a course is in a curriculum period with no configured blocks, or if a course has no rotations created, you won't have information to pick from for the selection.
If the parent stage that the selection is created under is set to ‘Sequential’, multiple blocks may be added to the selection to create a sequential ordering, or “stream”. If you have not created any blocks in a sequential selection, you will see a form for defining the ‘Course’, ‘Length’, and ‘Rotation’ of the first block, as well as a toggle for setting the block to an active or inactive state. The ‘Length’ field requires a value for ‘Course’, and ‘Rotation’ requires a value for ‘Length’. Click the ‘Confirm’ button to finalize the current block.
After finalizing the first block in your sequential selection, you have the option to ‘Cancel’, which will discard the selection currently being defined, ‘Add New Block’ to define and add another block to the sequence, and ‘Finish’, which will save the current sequential selection, including all of its contained blocks. You also have the option to toggle the active/inactive state on any existing blocks, or open a specific block to make changes, simply by clicking its ‘Edit’ button. In the example below, Block 1 is set to a course with code “CRS” and a rotation of “ROT”.
This information about length and rotation is being pulled from the rotations built for a course in Clinical Experiences > Rotation Schedule. If a course is in a curriculum period with no configured blocks, or if a course has no rotations created, you won't have information to pick from for the selection.
After clicking on the ‘Manage Selections’ button for a specific stage’s card, you will be shown a focused view for that stage. This view contains a ‘Stages’ link below the selected lottery card, to navigate back to the list of all the stages for the lottery you are working within. The card for the currently selected stage appears below that ‘Stages’ link, followed by an overview of all its selections. Above the selections overview there is an ‘Add New Selection’ button for creating new selections.
In this version of the application, the selections overview section consists of a simplified list of each selection, with associated buttons to ‘Edit’ or ‘Delete’ each individual selection. In future versions of the application, this simplified list will be replaced with a scheduling overview UI similar to a rotation scheduler.
Navigate to Admin > Clinical Experience, and click on the Lotteries tab.
You will see a list of all your existing lotteries. Each lottery in this list is represented by its own card, which can be expanded or collapsed as needed by clicking on the + / - buttons at the top right of each card. Only the first lottery in the list will be expanded on initial page load.
The list of lotteries has a ‘Search Lotteries’ input field above it, which can be used to narrow down the results of the lotteries list, based on any matches between the typed query and the lottery titles. There are also options for determining the sorting order of the results (title or date, ascending or descending).
Each lottery card header contains its title, and a status bar below that displays counters for how many learners are in that lottery’s audience, as well as how many stages it contains.
An expanded lottery card contains a tabbed navigation section. The ‘Audience’ tab displays the defined audience for the lottery and includes a ‘Search Audience’ input field for filtering results.
The ‘Stages’ tab shows a similar list, but for all stages in the lottery, including their open and close dates, which describe the period of time when the stage will be open to learners to make their choices. The status of each stage will appear in a badge to the right of the stage’s dates.
The ‘Schedules’ tab will eventually display the schedules created by the lottery processing. For this version of the module, clicking into the ‘Schedules’ tab will only display a message saying that schedules will appear there once they have been approved, from draft to published.
Each lottery card also has a footer containing several buttons, one to ‘Manage Stages’, and another two that allow you to ‘Edit’ or ‘Delete’ the lottery.
Clicking the ‘Edit’ button on a lottery card will allow you to change the lottery’s title and modify its audience, by adding new learners or removing existing ones with the same process used when creating a lottery. Click 'Cancel’ to discard your changes or ‘Confirm’ to accept them.
The ‘Delete’ button will discard and remove that lottery after prompting the user to confirm their action.
Clicking ‘Manage Stages’ will change the main view to focus on the associated lottery, displaying its card at the top of the page, followed by a list of all its stages and a button to schedule a new stage.
After clicking on the ‘Manage Stages’ button for a specific lottery’s card, you will be shown a focused view for that lottery. This view contains a ‘Lotteries’ link at the top of the page, to navigate back to the list of all lotteries. The card for the currently selected lottery appears below that link, followed by a list of all the lottery’s stages and a ‘Schedule a Stage’ button to create a new stage.
Click ‘Schedule a Stage’. This will display a card that allows you to configure the details of a new stage to be added to the applicable lottery.
Provide a ‘Stage Type’. This dropdown contains two options. The first option is ‘Sequential Selection’, which means that each Selection in the stage would contain multiple Blocks, creating a stream or ordering of rotations. Selecting the second option, ‘Singular Selection’ means that each Selection in the stage will contain one Block each.
The choice between ‘Sequential Selection’ or ‘Singular Selection’ is often dependent on a given organization’s preference. A diagram displaying a comparison between the two stage types is provided below.
The next set of inputs are for defining the open and close dates of your lottery stage. This date range determines the period of time when learners will be able to log in and rank their preferences for selections.
The next input is a drop-down list that sets the minimum ‘Satisfaction Threshold’. When the lottery processing occurs, it will attempt to optimize the results, matching as many learners with their top choices as possible. This process tracks overall learner satisfaction on a weighted scale. The closer all learners get to their top choices, the higher the score accumulated for the stage. This accumulated score is checked against the maximum possible score, which would be achieved if every single learner received their top choice. The stage’s overall satisfaction rating is the percentage derived from those two scores. This threshold input allows you to set the minimum overall satisfaction that must be achieved for a stage to be considered successful. Any processing iteration that falls under this threshold will be flagged.
The final input on the form is a text area for notes. ‘Notes’ are not required but can be useful for identifying or commenting on any steps remaining in the lottery processes or leaving information for other staff who may be continuing the process at a later time.
Click the ‘Confirm’ button at the bottom of the form to schedule the stage with the details you’ve entered.
Click ‘Cancel’ to discard the stage currently being defined.
Click 'Schedule a Stage' again to add additional stages to the lottery.
Each stage card is titled with its start and end dates in the header. Just below the title in the header is a status bar that displays some helpful information, including a badge for the stage’s status, a counter for how many selections the stage contains, and a label showing whether the stage type is “Sequential” or “Singular”. The footer contains three buttons, ‘Manage Selections’, ‘Edit’, and ‘Delete’.
The ‘Edit’ button will open up an existing stage for editing, however “Stage Type’, ‘Open Date’, and ‘Close Date’ will be locked, as only the ‘Satisfaction Threshold’ and ‘Notes’ fields may be modified after a stage has been created.
The ‘Delete’ button will discard and remove that stage after prompting the user to confirm their action.
The ‘Manage Selections’ button works similarly to the ‘Manage Stages’ button that was clicked to arrive at the current view and list of stages, but will instead take the user to a new view focused on the associated stage, displaying a list of all that stage’s selections.
