Manage Lotteries

Elentra's Lottery module is designed to streamline the process of populating Rotation Schedules for the clinical portion of a curriculum.

Article Content 

• Lotteries Overview 
• Add, Edit, or Delete Lotteries
• Lotteries Table View
• Lotteries Tab View 
• Configuring Lottery Stages
• Ranking Stage 
• Swapping Stage 
• Publish Schedule 

Lotteries Overview

The Manage Lotteries module allows admins to create, manage, and configure Lotteries that contain schedule options based on rotation, instructors, and locations availability on different dates. To access the module, go to the top menu and select Admin> Manage Lotteries. 

Running a Lottery will enable learners to input their preferences by ranking schedule options, swapping schedules/rotations with other learners, or seeing what's available to make their requests. After running a Lottery, the resulting Draft (Tentative) Schedules can be manually edited as needed.

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.

The admin can publish the results as the finalized schedule, shared with the learners, Instructors and Locations.

Add, Edit, or Delete Lotteries

Lotteries are made up of stages. Elentra currently supports two different types of stages: Ranking and Swapping. Only one stage can be run at a time.

Add or Edit the Location Manually.

Pre-Conditions: Ensure that a rotation schedule has been created that contains rotations, rotation slots, and optionally the rotations can have instructor and location pools in the Clinical Experience> Rotation Schedule module.   

• Go to Admin > Manage Lotteries   
• Click on the Add Lottery button (+), fill out the form and click Save.  
• You should be able to see the Lottery on the Table View.
  • The visibility to learners is hidden by default.
  • The status of the Lottery is Draft by default, which means that the tentative schedules assigned to learners inside the Lottery will not be shown on the learner's Elentra schedules until the Lottery is Published.
• To edit a Lottery's title, click on the Pencil icon on the table.  

Deleting Lotteries

Deleting Lotteries and all its contents (stages, students' preferences, etc.) can directly be done through the Manage Lotteries module.

• Go to Admin > Manage Lotteries
• Select the Lottery(s) you wish to delete, click the Delete selected button and confirm.

Lotteries Table View

When accessing the Manage Lotteries module, you'll see a list of Lotteries with the fields that are added manually (Title, Rotation Schedule).

The Visibility to Learner toggle must be switched manually to turn it on.

The Status will change from Draft to Published when the user publishes the tentative schedules to the learners' schedules, and the system automatically calculates the number of stages.

From this view, you can:

• Search a Lottery by title
• Sort the table by any column
• Filter the table by status

Lotteries Tab View

When clicking on one specific Lottery's title hyperlink, you can access and edit its details through the different tabs.

Stages Tab:
In this tab, admins can add, edit, or delete stages to the lottery, which will be explained in the Configure Lottery Stages section.   

Schedule Tab:
In this tab, admins can see and/or add any manual bookings that they want to consider before running a Lottery. When the tentative (Draft) schedules are assigned to learners, the manual bookings are taken into consideration, which means that tentative (Draft) schedules do not overwrite what's manually booked into the learners' schedules. Once a stage closes, admins will see the latest tentative (Draft) schedules version for all learners on this tab and do further manual adjustments needed.

Visibility Tab:
In this tab, admins can toggle the visibility of the Lottery to control if participating learners can see the Lottery/Stages or not (can also be done from the Table View). This helps to prevent learners from seeing work in progress when configuring stages.

Configuring Lottery Stages

To run a Lottery, you need to create at least one stage. You can only open one stage at a time, and each stage can have different rules.

We recommend setting the Lottery visibility to learners as off while configuring the Lottery stages. It will prevent learners from seeing the work in progress.

Elentra currently supports two types of stages: Ranking and Swapping.

Ranking Stage

A ranking stage allows admins to upload schedule options (Tracks) that learners can rank from the most desired to the least desired. After collecting the students' preferences, the system runs an algorithm and generates different variations (different combinations of schedule options with learners) to choose from. Each variation indicates the percentage of learners that get their top pick in the ranking stage. When a variation is selected, the schedule options are tentatively assigned to the participating learners. They create a tentative (Draft) schedule that they can see through the Lottery module until the admin publishes it.

Add, Configure and Open a Ranking Stage 

1. Click on the Lottery's title hyperlink to access the Stages tab    
2. Click the Add Stage button (+), select Stage Type = Ranking, and click Confirm.    
3. On the stage card that will appear, you will need to configure the Rules, Options, and Exclusions (optional)    
   1. Rules: Click on the Edit button for Rule, and select learners rank = schedules. You can optionally mark the checkbox below Ignore rotation slot capacities to let the system assign the draft schedules without considering minimum and maximum capacities if they were already set up in the system. This means that many learners can get the same schedule option assigned because there are no restrictions on the number of learners that can get the same option.
   2. Options: Click the Edit button for options, then export the sample CSV. On the CSV file, replace the example block dates with the ones defined in the curriculum period. You can create one schedule option on each row by indicating the rotation code below each block. You can create as many unique options as you want to reflect the different order in which learners can take different rotations. Keep in mind that when importing the CSV file, the system will validate that the block dates, rotation codes, and the availability of slots for the rotations on those blocks already exist. Otherwise, the preview will show those spaces as 'undefined.'    
   3. Exclusions (optional): Click on the Edit button for exclusions, select the learner(s) that you want to exclude from this Stage (they won't be able to participate) and click Confirm.    
4. Once you have selected the Rules and uploaded valid Options, the Open Stage button will be enabled. Don't forget that the Lottery visibility should be on so that learners can see the View Lottery button and then participate in the opened stage.  

Close a Ranking Stage

1. After learners have ranked the schedule options from their top pick to the least desired one, you can click on the Close Stage button.
2. The system will show a message on the stage status that says Generating Variations.
3. After 5 minutes, the message will change to Pending Variation Confirmation, which means that the variations (different combinations of options assigned to learners) are ready for the admin to select.
4. Go to the Schedule tab, and you will be able to see the different variations and which percentage of learners are getting their top pick with each.
5. After selecting one of the variations and confirming, the options are populated to the learners' tentative (Draft) schedules, which can be seen by students from the Lotteries module. Please be aware that these schedules won't appear on the official learners' schedules on Elentra until the admin publishes the Lottery, after doing manual adjustments if necessary.

Swapping Stage 

When participating in a stage to swap schedules or rotations, learners have the option to toggle if they want to swap or not.

If a learner chooses to participate in a schedule or rotation swap:

• Learners can send swap requests to other learners. This requires both learners to approve before the swap is finalized;
• The other option is that learners can request to swap their tentative schedules or rotations with Unassigned Tracks/Rotations.
  • When a Lottery ranking runs, institutions can advise the number of slots with capacities to the contained rotations. Meaning the institutions will indicate a maximum number of learners that can be assigned to them.
  • Unassigned Options/Rotations indicate that the institution still has capacity available after the ranking stage is closed and the options were preliminary assigned to learners.
  • If a student selects an Unassigned Tracks/Rotations that are available, the swap will happen immediately. 
• If the student chooses not to participate in a schedule or rotation swap, their schedules will be unavailable for other learners' swap requests.

Add, Configure and Open a Swapping Stage    

1. Click on the Lottery's title hyperlink to access the Stages tab    
2. Click the Add Stage button (+), select stage type = swapping, and hit Confirm    
3. On the stage card that will appear, you will need to configure the Rules, Options and Exclusions (optional)    
   1. Rules: Click on the Edit button for rule, and select learners rank = schedules (if you want learners to swap whole schedules) or rotations (if you want learners to swap specific rotations).    
   2. Options: This section is shown until you select the rule for swapping    
   3. Exclusions (optional): Click on the Edit button for Exclusions, select the Learner(s) that you want to exclude from this stage (they won't be able to participate) and confirm.    
4. Once you have selected the Rule, the Open Stage button will be enabled. Ensure that the Lottery visibility is on so that Learners can see the View Lottery button and then participate in the opened stage.    

Close a Swapping Stage

• After learners have swapped their tentative (Draft) schedules or rotations with other learners or with Unassigned Tracks/Rotations, you can click on the Close Stage button.    
• Go to the Schedule tab, and you will be able to see the populated learners' tentative (Draft) schedules, which can be seen by students from the Lotteries module. Please be aware that these schedules won't appear on the official learners' schedules on Elentra until the admin publishes the Lottery, after doing manual adjustments if needed. 

Publish Schedule    

After closing all stages and doing the manual adjustments needed to the tentative (Draft) schedules, you can publish the Lottery. Publishing will officially populate the learner's schedules in Elentra while respecting any manual bookings on the learner's schedules done through the Clinical Experience module.    

1. Go to Admin > Manage Lotteries    
2. Select the Lottery you wish to publish, click the Publish Schedule button and confirm.    
3. The Lottery status will change from Draft to Published