Introduction

Elentra's Lottery module is designed to streamline the process of populating a rotation schedule for the clinical portion of a curriculum. The module provides administrators with the ability to create, manage, and configure lotteries, while also providing learners with the opportunity to provide input 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. Resulting 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.

Sample Process

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. (It can then be merged into the Rotation Schedule used to build the lottery.)

Database Setting Options

• 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.

Walkthrough

While the full process of using the Elentra Lottery module has many steps on the way to generating a published schedule, the first of these steps is fairly simple, and that is to create a Lottery. In the context of this module, a lottery acts as a container, that defines an audience of learners and is tied to a specific curriculum period. In order to create a new lottery, we first need to navigate to the Lottery module in Elentra, then select the curriculum period to which the lottery belongs.

To navigate to the Lottery module on your Elentra installation, click Admin > Clinical Experience, then click the Lotteries tab link, which will take you to the Lotteries Overview. Select the desired curriculum period from the dropdown selector labelled Term & Curriculum Period, then click the Add Lottery button.

This action will open the lottery creation form, which will prompt you for some details in order to proceed. Start by providing a descriptive Title, then move on to the Visibility Date and Visibility Time, which determines when the audience of learners will be able to see the lottery in their My Lotteries dashboard.

Next, you'll need to select a Draft Schedule to import. The lottery schedule will act as a working copy of the schedule specified here. The audience of learners and available rotations are automatically determined by the schedule chosen for import. Once ready, click the Confirm button, then once again for the confirmation modal that will pop up.

After the process completes, you will be returned to the Lotteries Overview, where you will now see your newly created Lottery card in the list. You're now ready to create a Stage for the Lottery.

Lotteries Overview

The Lotteries Overview is the landing page for Elentra's Lottery module, and consists of a stacked list of all existing lotteries (represented as separate Lottery Cards) that are associated with the currently selected curriculum period.

Curriculum Period Selector

At the top of the lotteries overview is a dropdown selector labelled Term & Curriculum Period. Lotteries are always bound to a specific curriculum period. To view the list of existing lotteries, or to create a new lottery you must first select a curriculum period.

Once a curriculum period is selected, a stacked list below will be populated with any existing lotteries, and the inline Add Lottery button will become enabled, allowing the admin to create a new lottery.

Lotteries List

Each lottery associated with the selected curriculum period will be represented in this list as an individual Lottery Card. Just above this list of cards, there are controls for searching through and sorting the list of lotteries. To search for a specific lottery by name, you may use the Search Lotteries input field, or adjust the Sort By selector **** to arrange the list in ascending or descending order, by either the title or date.

Lottery Card

Each lottery that appears in the stacked Lotteries List is represented as a separate Lottery Card, which provides administrators with useful controls, and information about the status and details of a lottery.

Card Header

A lottery card is divided into three parts - a header, a body, and a footer. The card header showcases the administrator-provided title of the lottery, and off to the right-hand side, a toggle that expands or collapses the lottery card. An upward-pointing chevron icon means the lottery has been expanded, while a downward-pointing chevron indicates the lottery is in its collapsed, default state.

Card Body

When a lottery card is in its default, collapsed state, a simple set of meta information is displayed. This meta information consists of two separate counts, one for the number of stages contained in the lottery and another for the total number of learners in the lottery's audience.

Expanded Content Tabs

When a lottery card is expanded by clicking the downward-pointing chevron button at the right of the card header, a new content window will appear within the card. This content window is comprised of two content tabs, Schedule and Stages, which allow the admin to view more in-depth information about the lottery**.**

Card Footer

The card footer contains several action buttons. On the right side are Edit and Delete buttons, and on the left there is a Manage Stages button, which will open up the Stages Overview **** for that lottery.

Modifying Existing Stages

Editing a Stage

Each Stage Card has its own Edit button. When this button is clicked, the selected Stage will be opened in a form similar to the one used when Creating a Stage, with the existing data pre-populated. All fields except for the Stage Type will be editable.

Deleting a Stage

Each Stage Card also has its own Delete button. When this button is clicked, a confirmation dialogue box will be shown, to verify that the stage should indeed be deleted. A warning notice will be displayed above a minimalistic summary outlining all of the associated Options that will be deleted along with the stage, if the Confirm button is selected.

Modifying Existing Option Rotations

Editing an Option Rotation

As you progress through building your Options, the will appear as coloured cells in their respective Option's row. If you need to modify an individual option rotation, simply click on its coloured block in the timeline, and a context menu popover will be displayed, showing additional information about the rotation and some action buttons.

Clicking the Edit action button will open a form very similar to the one used to add a new option rotation, that will allow you to modify the chosen option rotation. You will be unable to Filter by Block, however all other controls are enabled, allowing you to change to a different rotation or block by length.

Deleting an Option Rotation

Much like the process for editing an option rotation, to delete one you must first open the context menu popover by clicking on the option rotation you would like to remove. When the popover is displayed, select the Delete button. A confirmation dialogue will be displayed, asking you to confirm your decision. Click Cancel to back out of the action, or Confirm to proceed with deletion.

The 'My Lotteries' Dashboard

When a Learner clicks into their Lotteries dashboard, they will arrive at the My Lotteries page. This page displays a list of all Lotteries that the Learner is a part of, presented as a stacked list of cards. This list of Lotteries can be narrowed down using the Search Lotteries and Filter Lotteries input fields, and each lottery's card contains the following information:

• The title and creation date of the Lottery, as set by the administrator.

• A helpful contextual alert stating the Lottery's status and timing information.

• An Open action button, that navigates to the for that Lottery.

If a Lottery will be open in the future, a message is displayed indicating the date and time the Lottery will be opened for Learner input.

If a Lottery has closed and is no longer open to Learners, a message is displayed stating the date and time when the Lottery closed.

Schedule Variation

When a Stage has closed and the Draft Schedule(s) button (labelled Redraft Schedule(s) in the case of Stages that have been drafted previously) is clicked, a background job will be scheduled for the very near future, to generate the variations using the Lottery module's processing algorithm.

Once that job and the algorithm has completed its processing, you will have one or more Schedule Variations, each of which represents the outcome of one attempt or iteration of the algorithm. Each Schedule Variation may be slightly different, and this is because the algorithm uses randomization to shuffle the list of Learners, ensuring impartiality.

After the variations are generated, they can be reviewed in the Variations Overview one at a time. If an optimal variation is found, it can be merged into the Lottery's working schedule, which can be published at a later date when ready. If for any reason there are no viable schedule variations created from the algorithm's processing, you may select the Redraft Schedule(s) button on the Stage Card in the Stages Overview.

Options

An Option is an ordered sequence of rotations with some variance in rotations or timing. These options are built using the options builder located in the Options Overview. When a stage is "Open", the options will be presented to learners in a stacked list, which they will then rank in numerical order of preference. Once learners have submitted their preferences and the stage has closed, the drafting algorithm then uses their ranked, preferential data in its attempts to build schedule variations that grant the highest number of learners their most desired choices.

Appearance

Admin Side

When the admin is building Options, they appear as individual rows in the Options Builder.

Learner Side

When a Learner is ranking the Options in order of preference in the Ranking Interface, they appear as separate, numbered cards with several controls. When a Learner-side Option card is checked, two chevron-icon buttons will appear, allowing the Learner to nudge the checked Option(s) up or down.

Walkthrough

After creating and scheduling a Stage, your primary task is to create Options before the stage opens, so that Learners will have a variety of choices to rank by preference once it does. On any Stage Card that has not opened yet, there will be a Manage Options button, which you can click to arrive at the Options Overview.

‌From there, you should click the Add Option button to create your first Option, which will appear below, in an interface that looks and behaves similarly to Elentra’s rotation scheduler.

The Options Builder

In this Options Builder interface, each row represents a separate Option, and the right column of the interface represents a timeline of the curriculum period divided visually as Blocks.

Rotation blocks are added by administrators to each Option, along their respective linear rows in the timeline, thereby creating different sequences of rotation blocks for each Option. Once this process is complete and the Stage reaches its opening date, Learners will be able to login and view the list of Options, and rank them in their order of preference.

Opening the Adding Rotations Form

Clicking anywhere in the schedule portion of the Options Builder will open up a form below, that can be used to select which rotation and block should be added to the Option. The location where you click does matter, so make sure to click into the row corresponding to the Option where you would like to add the rotation.

Also take note of the grid divisions. As you hover over the schedule, it will highlight the hovered Block in light blue to let you know the timeframe or range where you would be adding the rotation, however this is also customizable in the form once it has been opened.

Adding Option Rotations

The form for Adding Rotations consists of a list of all available blocks, and above that, three dropdown selectors which are used to filter that list.

The first filter is Filter by Block, which will change the highlighted block in the schedule’s timeline showing you the start and end range of the Block. If you’ve clicked into the wrong Block in the horizontal timeline, you can change that with this filter.

The second filter is Filter by Length, which allows you to limit the rotation blocks you can choose from by their length (typically 1, 2, or 4 Weeks in length). The third and final filter is Filter by Rotation, which can be a very helpful starting point if you know the exact type of rotation but want to see the timing options available. As you modify and combine of these filters, the list below will adjust accordingly. Each Block for a Rotation is represented as a radio button row. If you click on one of these, it will become selected and a visual representation of the block’s timing and length will appear in the schedule timeline. You can click through as many of the rotation blocks as you like to see how they correspond to the the timeline and any other existing rotations.

Once you are satisfied with your choice, click the Confirm button on the form to lock it into the Option. You'll need to repeat this process for each Option, so that ideally that the Learner audience logs in they will have a good variety of choices to rank.

As you are building the Options, please note that if you find you have added a rotation block, but need to modify it at a later date, you can also Edit or Delete existing rotation entries in the builder.

Generating Schedule Variations

Once a Lottery has had a Stage scheduled, and its Options created, the process of gathering Learner input will occur once the Stage reaches its opening date. Later on, after reaching the Stage's closing date, you should have a set of data representing each Learner's Rankings of the Options from most preferred to least preferred.

Viewing the Stages Overview at this point will show the Stage Card with a status badge of "Closed", indicating that the timeframe for Learners to provide input has ended. You'll also see a new set of controls on the Stage Card. The first is a dropdown selector that allows you to specify the number of desired Schedule Variations you would like to generate, alongside an action button to initiate the process of generating them.

Variations Overview

After you've generated Schedule Variations for a Stage, that Stage's card will display a button allowing you to Review Schedules. Clicking that button will take you to the Variations Overview, which contains the Reviewing Schedules interface.

Under the "Reviewing Schedules" heading, you'll see a dropdown selector labelled Select Schedule Variation allowing you to select one of the generated variations for review. The dropdown will contain up to five numbered variations, depending on the number specified when clicking the Draft Schedule(s) button beforehand. If any errors occurred while drafting a specific schedule variation, that variation will be marked with a red "Failed" badge, both in the dropdown and when that variation is selected.

When a schedule variation is selected, a modified version of a rotation scheduler will appear below the dropdown selector. This scheduler interface contains a stacked list of Learner rows, with some meta information in the left-hand column, such as their profile picture, full name, and student number.

Learner Assignment Messages

Additionally, below the Learner's name and student number, an assignment message will be displayed to indicate one of the three potential states a Learner can be on at the end of the algorithmic processing for the selected variation. These three states are:

• If the Learner submitted their Rankings while the Stage was open, and they received one of the Options, then the message will read as "Received Rank #XX", where the XX is replaced with their numerical Rank for the Option that they received. As an example, if a Learner's assignment message reads "Received Rank #9", that means they were assigned a certain Option, and that Option was their 9th highest preference, whereas "Received Rank #1" means that Learner was assigned their most desired Option.

• If the Learner did not submit their Rankings while the Stage was open, and they received one of the Options, then the message will read as "Auto-Assigned". This indicates that they did receive an Option, but their preferences were given less of a priority during processing as they were generic (Learners who take time to submit a customized list of Rankings are processed with priority over Learners who do not submit their preferences).

• In cases where the Learner could not be assigned an Option at all due to any errors that may occur while running the processing algorithm, the Learner row will be empty, and a red warning message will be displayed that reads "Failed to Schedule"

Action Buttons

Underneath the scheduler interface are two action buttons. The first of these is a simple Cancel button that will deselect the current Schedule Variation, clearing the scheduler interface and allowing you to select a different variation to review.

The second button is labelled Merge Schedule, which will open a confirmation dialogue to ensure that it is not merged before the administrator is ready. Upon clicking the Confirm button in the confirmation modal, the currently selected Schedule Variation will be merged into the Lottery's working schedule.

If an error happens to occur when attempting to merge the variation into the Lottery's working schedule, an alert message will be displayed to inform the administrator that the operation was not successful. The HTTP response code from the API request will be included in this alert, which can be helpful for diagnosing any potential issues.

Walkthrough

Once you've created a Lottery for your specified curriculum period, your next step should be to create a Stage. To get started from the Lotteries Overview, click the Manage Stages button on your Lottery Card. This will take you to the Stages Overview, which displays a simplified card representing the Lottery you are currently focused on, and a list of stages underneath it, called the Stage Schedule.

Once you've arrived in the Stages Overview, click the action button off to the right-hand side, labelled Schedule a Stage. This will open up the form for scheduling a stage.

This form will prompt you for some details in order to proceed. The first step is to determine which Stage Type should be used. Currently the only option is "Sequential", which means that each Option will be comprised of a sequence of rotations. In future Elentra ME updates, you will be able to choose alternatives to "Sequential", such as "Singular" (each Option consists of a single rotation), or "Site" (learners rank their preferred sites for rotations, as opposed to Options containing rotations).

Moving on from the Stage Type field, you'll need to set a couple of date and time pairs, one for the Start Date/Time, and another for the Close Date/Time. These two moments in time represent the range of time that the stage will be available to learners. When the value set for the Start Date/Time is reached, the stage's status will change to "Open" and learners will begin the process of logging in and ranking the Options that have been created for the stage. This means that you should always ensure that you schedule a stage's starting point far enough in advance that you have enough of time to manage your Options beforehand.

To set a date and time, begin by clicking the calendar icon to the right of the date input. This will open a small calendar. Click on any valid day to set the desired date. You can use the single chevron arrows on either side of the current month to navigate to the previous or next month, while the doubled chevron arrows will achieve the same result, but for the year.

You may also edit the time of day by using the H (hour) and M (minute) drop-downs to select the desired 12-hour time, and use the button group to the right to toggle between AM and PM.

The Notes field is entirely optional, but provides administrators with a handy place to add any additional, relevant information that they feel is helpful. Once ready, click the Confirm button. After the process completes, you will be returned to the Stages Overview, where you will now see your newly created Stage Card in the list. As indicated by the status badge ("Options Required"), you're now ready to start creating and managing Options.

The Lottery's Working Schedule

A Lottery's "working schedule" begins as a copy of the rotation schedule that is initially imported when the Lottery is created. It works as a temporary sort of holding tank for the initial state of the schedule, but it also includes all of the edits that have been made to it since, as well __ as __ every Schedule Variation that has been merged in at the end of a Stage

After creating your Lottery, building and opening Stages within it, and drafting and merging in Schedule Variations, your Lottery's working schedule should hopefully be in a state where it is ready to be published, which will make it accessible to all of the audience's Learners.

Publishing the Lottery's Working Schedule

To publish a Lottery's working schedule, navigate to the Lotteries Overview, to view your list of Lottery Cards. Click on the "More" button on the target Lottery's card (the chevron icon button in the right-hand side of the card header) to expand the card.

You will then see two tabs, labelled Schedule and Stages. Ensure that the Schedule tab is highlighted, and a version of the rotation scheduler will display everything currently contained within the Lottery's working schedule, presented as a stacked list of Learners. Below this scheduler interface is a Publish button.

Stages Overview

The Stages Overview is reached by clicking the Manage Stages button in the footer of a Lottery Card. It is a focused view that displays a list of all existing stages (represented as separate Stage Cards), which are associated with the selected lottery.

A simplified version of the selected lottery card appears at the top of the page, and just above that is a Lotteries link with a backwards-facing chevron button, which when clicked will return the administrator back to the Lotteries Overview.

Stage Schedule

Each stage associated with the selected lottery will be represented in this list as an individual Stage Card. Just above this list of cards, there are controls for searching through and sorting the list of stages. To search for a specific stage by type, you may use the Search Stages input field, or adjust the Sort By selector **** to arrange the list in ascending or descending order, by either the title or date.

Modifying Existing Lotteries

Editing a Lottery

Each Lottery Card has its own Edit button. When this button is clicked, the selected lottery will be opened in a form similar to the one used when Creating a Lottery, with the existing data pre-populated. Only the Title, Visibility Date, and Visibility Time fields will be editable, as once a lottery has been created, the Draft Schedule may not be changed.

Deleting a Lottery

Each Lottery Card also has its own Delete button. When this button is clicked, a confirmation dialogue box will be shown, to verify that the lottery should indeed be deleted. A warning notice will be displayed above a minimalistic summary outlining all of the associated stages, that will be deleted along with the lottery if the Confirm button is selected.

Stage Card

Each stage that appears in the stacked Stages List is represented as a separate Stage Card, which provides administrators with useful controls, and information about the status and details of a stage.

Card Header

A stage card is divided into three parts - a header, a body, and a footer. The card header displays the type of stage (Sequential, Singular, or Site), and off to the right-hand side, a toggle that expands or collapses the stage card. An upward-pointing chevron icon means the stage has been expanded, while a downward-pointing chevron indicates the stage is in its collapsed, default state.

Card Body & Footer

The body of a stage card contains information pertaining to the timeframe and duration of the stage, as well as a Status Badge that indicates what state the stage is currently in. When the stage card is expanded, by clicking the downward-pointing chevron button at the right of the card header, a text input field becomes visible, where administrators may add any pertinent Notes.

The footer of a Stage Card contains several buttons and controls, most of them context-specific. Because these controls are context specific, and are determined by the stage status, a list of these possible statuses is provided below, along with screenshots of each card's appearance.

Stage Statuses

Options Required

The Stage is currently lacking any administrator-defined Options. You may Edit or Delete the Stage, or click Manage Options to begin creating Options for Learners to rank.

Ready

The Stage has one or more Options defined, and is awaiting its open date. You may add or modify existing Options before then by clicking the Manage Options button, or Edit/Delete the Stage if necessary.

Open

The Stage is open to learners so they can provide their Option rankings. Because Learners are actively ranking the Options, the button to navigate to the Options Overview is labelled as View Options, and will take you to the overview in a read-only, non-modifiable state.

Closed

The ranking process has ended, and drafting of Schedule Variations may be initiated. As Learners have already ranked their Options, you may only View Options, with the Options Overview presented **** in its read-only, non-modifiable state. Your next step is to specify the number of Schedule Variations to generate (1 - 5) based off of the Learner feedback, and click the Draft Schedule(s) button to initiate the drafting process.

Draft in Progress

Drafting has commenced and the algorithm is in the process of generating Schedule Variations. All controls will be locked down until the drafting process has completed.

Draft Succeeded

The drafting process has generated at least one viable Schedule Variation. You may still View Options (presented in their read-only state), or click Redraft Schedule(s) to generate a specified number of new Schedule Variations. If you do not need to perform a redraft, clicking Review Schedules will allow you to review the generated Schedule Variations.

Draft Failed

The drafting process did not generate any viable Schedule Variations. This means the specified number of Schedule Variations were generated, however none of the variations are viable (inviability is usually due to a variation having one or more Learners who could not successfully be scheduled any rotations). You may View Options to inspect them in a read-only state, Review Schedules to check the variations to see where they went awry, Delete the Stage, or Redraft Schedule(s) to try again.

Merged

A Schedule Variation from the drafting process has been merged into the Lottery's working schedule. You may View Options in their read-only state or Delete the Stage.

Walkthrough

On the Stage Card, begin by clicking on the button labelled "1 Variation", which will open up a dropdown allowing you to choose between 1 to 5 variants to be generated. Once you have decided on the number of Schedule Variations you would like, click the Draft Schedule(s) button.

Under the "Reviewing Schedules" heading in the Variations Overview, you'll see a dropdown selector labelled Select Schedule Variation allowing you to select one of the generated variations for review. The dropdown will contain up to five numbered variations, depending on the number specified when clicking the Draft Schedule(s) button beforehand. If any errors occurred while drafting a specific schedule variation, that variation will be marked with a red "Failed" badge, both in the dropdown and when that variation is selected.

Reviewing a Schedule Variation

When a schedule variation is selected, a modified version of a rotation scheduler will appear below the dropdown selector. This scheduler interface contains a stacked list of Learner rows, with some meta information in the left-hand column, such as their profile picture, full name, and student number.

Merging a Schedule Variation

Once everything in a specific Schedule Variation has been reviewed, if it is deemed to be ready and chosen as the most viable variation out of all that were drafted, it should be merged into the Lottery's working schedule.

This process is initiated with the button under the scheduler, labelled Merge Schedule. When clicked, **** it will open a confirmation dialogue to ensure that it is not merged before the administrator is ready. Upon clicking the Confirm button in the confirmation modal, the currently selected Schedule Variation will be merged into the Lottery's working schedule.

If an error happens to occur when attempting to merge the variation into the Lottery's working schedule, an alert message will be displayed to inform the administrator that the operation was not successful. The HTTP response code from the API request will be included in this alert, which can be helpful for diagnosing any potential issues.

Ranking Options by Preference

When a Learner has an open Lottery available on their My Lotteries dashboard, they can click that Lottery's Open action button to begin Ranking the Options in order of their preference. This process is only available to Learners while the Lottery's stage status is actively "open".

This step is crucial to the Lottery process, as Learner input is collected in order to create the data that the Lottery algorithm uses when attempting to maximize overall Learner satisfaction.

The Ranking Interface

Header

At the top of the Ranking Interface is a heading that displays the title of the Lottery (as provided by the administrator during its creation), as well as some information about how long ago the Lottery was opened. Under this heading, a brief instructional message is provided for Learners.

Options List

The collection of Options is presented as a stacked list of Option cards, that each have their own controls that can be used to reorder the list.

The list is always presented in ascending numerical order, with the top Option choice (Rank 1) first and the least desired Option residing at the bottom of the list. Moving Options up means a higher preference, and moving them down indicates they are less desirable.

Dragging and Dropping

To move a single Option to another place in the list, click and drag the handle on the left side of the card. The handle is an icon consisting of a collection of 6 dots, arranged in two vertical, 3 dot columns. Hold down the click button on this icon handle, then drag up or down. Release the mouse button once the transparent "ghost" of the dragged option is sitting where you'd like in the list.

Selecting One or More Options

The left side of each Option card also includes a checkbox. You may check more than one Option at a time, and certain controls will become enabled depending on what reordering actions are available. When an Option is checked, the left-hand column expands to include Nudge Up and Nudge Down buttons, represented by an upward chevron icon, and a downward chevron icon, respectively.

Nudging Up or Down

When an Option is checked, and the Nudge Up and Nudge Down buttons are visible, clicking one will nudge the option in the selected direction, effectively swapping it with the Option currently residing in that location.

When multiple Options are checked, the nudge buttons are also available, however, if any gaps exist between the checked Options, they will be removed before the nudge occurs. As an example, let's say you have a list of five options (labelled alphabetically for demonstration).

1. Option A

2. Option B

3. Option C

4. Option D

5. Option E

Now let's say you check Options A, C, and D. The list now looks like this, with the checked Options visually highlighted:

1. [✔] Option A

2. Option B

3. [✔] Option C

4. [✔] Option D

5. Option E

In this multi-checked state, the Nudge Up buttons will be disabled for the checked Options. This is because one of them cannot move up any higher than it is, as Option A is already the top-most choice. However, it is possible to move the group of checked options downward in the list, using the Nudge Down button on any of the checked Options. Performing this action will result in the following list:

1. Option B

2. Option E

3. [✔] Option A

4. [✔] Option C

5. [✔] Option D

This is because before any nudge action, all checked Options are "squashed" together to remove any potential gaps, then moved as a grouped block in the direction of the nudge action.

Move To Top / Move to Bottom

When an Option is checked, the buttons in the page's sticky footer, Move to Top and Move to Bottom become enabled. If there are multiple Options checked, the labels change to say Move All to Top/Bottom. When either of these buttons is clicked, any checked Options will be squashed and grouped together to remove any gaps, then moved t the very top or very bottom of the list.

Direct Move

If you have a single Option checked and would like to move it to a specific Rank number, you can use the input field in the middle of the sticky page footer. Simply type in the destination Rank number, then click the Move button. The list will accommodate for the move by nudging all affected Options up or down by one, depending on whether the action moved the checked Option higher or lower in the list.

You can also perform a direct Move action when multiple Options are checked, and it will behave the same way, but be aware that if there are any gaps between your checked Options, as mentioned above, they will be removed prior to the move action. That means spread out checked Options will be squashed together into a block, then moved to their new destination rank.

Auto-Saving and Manual Saving

After every action that reorders the list, it will be automatically saved. There also exists a manual Save button in the page's sticky footer bar, that can be used to explicitly force the rankings to save. Hovering over this button will display a tooltip that shows the date and time when the rankings were last saved. You can use this tooltip to check and ensure that your rankings are fully stored before leaving the Ranking Interface.

Options Overview

The Options Overview is reached by clicking the Manage Options button in the footer of a Stage Card. It is a focused view that displays a schedule-based interface for building the options that learners will eventually be ranking in order of preference.

A simplified version of the current lottery card appears at the top of the page, and just above that is a Lotteries link with a backwards-facing chevron button, which when clicked will return the administrator back to the Lotteries Overview. Similarly, below the simplified lottery card is a simplified stage card representing the focused stage, and a chevron button and Stages link to return the admin to the Stages Overview.

Managing / Viewing Options

Managing Options

The core of the Managing Options interface is the option builder. Each row of the builder corresponds to one Option. Clicking any blank entry in the option row will open the form for Adding a Rotation, while clicking on an existing rotation in the row will display information about that rotation, and prompt the administrator to either Edit or Delete the rotation, if necessary.

Above the option builder on the right side, there is a button to Add Option rows to the builder. Each option also has a checkbox in the left-most column, and checking one or more of these inputs enables the action buttons below, which can be used to Delete or Duplicate the selected item(s).

Viewing Options

While the Options Overview is designed to allow administrators to build and customize options for learners to rank, there are certain scenarios where modifying the options would cause undesired behaviour. For this reason, when viewing the Options Overview, certain stage statuses will cause the overview to be rendered in a read-only, non-modifiable state. One such case where this occurs is when the stage is open to learners, to prevent the options from changing while they are in the process of being ranked by the learners.