Which type of Lottery should I use?
There are five types of lotteries in Leo:
- Course
- Course (Block)
- Event
- Group
It is important to determine which type of lottery would best suit your specific situation before you begin creating the Lottery record. See below for more information and examples about each type of Lottery in Leo. We will discuss the various components (elements, group access, etc.) and considerations that are involved in setting up and running each type of lottery in more detail in the following articles.
OUTCOME: The result of a course lottery will be that each student participating in the lottery will be awarded one course based on the number of elements and the capacity (max capacity) of each element. It is possible for students to not be awarded a course in the event there is not enough capacity for all students and/or students don't select, or rank, enough elements.
A course lottery is used when you want to allow students to rank-order their preference for a single course from a list of multiple elements. This is useful in various scenarios, including the following:
- Students are allowed the option to choose between various sites within a specific clinical rotation.
- Students have the option to choose between various electives, selectives, or sub-internships which have limited capacity.
Elements (course sections) in a course lottery can all have the same beginning and end date, or they can occur at different times or in different locations. It is important to note that each student, assuming there is enough capacity and that the student selected enough elements when rank-ordering their preferences, will be awarded one course. Leo's lottery process will attempt to give every lottery participant their top choice(s) based on capacity.
Once finalized, students can be automatically enrolled into the Course Section they were awarded.
Learn more about setting up and running a Course Lottery here.
OUTCOME: The outcome of a block lottery is that students will be awarded one section of each of the available courses, up to the number of available blocks.
EXAMPLE: Given a scenario with 12 blocks, and 16 possible courses, students will, based on capacity and their selections, be awarded 12 course sections, or one per block. In the scenario that there are 12 blocks but only 4 courses represented, students would be awarded four course sections, in four different blocks. They would not be awarded a course section in the remaining 8 blocks in the second scenario.
In a course block lottery, it is important to note that students are not prevented from being awarded courses from different blocks when the blocks have overlapping dates. If you want to prevent this from happening, it is best to only run a course block lottery in which none of the blocks have overlapping dates (e.g. all blocks contain either courses with four week rotations or all blocks contain courses with six week rotations).
However, if you are using multiple block lotteries, you can add Conflicts to your lottery record to prevent students from selecting courses in which they are already enrolled.
A Course Block Lottery is a special case of a course lottery in which elements (or courses) are grouped by their beginning and end dates. It is common in many situations for clinical rotations of equal length to begin and end on the same dates.
When a Course Lottery is additionally flagged as a Block Lottery, Leo will intelligently group your elements (course sections) into blocks based on those common beginning and end dates. This allows for students to not only rank-order their preference for a course section, but also the campus, or site, at the same time. A situation in which a block lottery proves beneficial is when you have clinical rotations of equal length occurring throughout the year and they all begin and end on the same dates. Student can rank-order their preferences and be awarded courses to fill their entire schedule in a single lottery!
Once finalized, students will be automatically enrolled into the Course Section(s) they were awarded in the Block Lottery.
Learn more about setting up and running a Course Block Lottery here.
OUTCOME: In a group lottery students will be awarded a Group in the Leo system. Groups can be representative of many different types of entities, which make group lotteries a very flexible type of lottery. Once group lotteries are finalized, student will be automatically added to the group they were awarded in the Leo system.
Group lotteries can be utilized in various ways. For example, they could be used to allow students to rank a lab group based on their preferences. More common, though, group lotteries are used to allow students to choose a sequence for clerkship rotations. Each element (Group) in the lottery is representative of a specific sequence of clinical rotations, and the groups should be named as such (e.g. FM, IM, Peds, Surgery, Psych, Neuro, OB might be a single group, or sequence, which can be selected and ranked by students).
When utilizing a group lottery as a sequence lottery, the groups that students are awarded can be utilized for subsequent course lotteries in which students might be selecting between various clinical sites for each rotation. The sequence group can be added to the appropriate course lottery so that only specific students have access to select clinical sites in their assigned location.
Learn more about setting up and running a Group Lottery here.
OUTCOME: In an Event Lottery, students will be awarded a single Event from a specific course section in which they are enrolled in Leo.
Event Lotteries in Leo allow students to rank-order events within a course section based on their preferences. An event lottery can include regular events (even if they are part of a linked event set) or multi-day events. Event lotteries are utilized when students are expected to complete various activities which may happen at different times and/or in different locations. Lotteries allow for an equitable experience when there isn't enough capacity for all students to have their first choice of times or locations. One example of this type of lottery might be when students are signing up to complete a service learning experience, but the locations and times available do not allow all students to participate at their preferred time or in their preferred location.
Once finalized, students will be automatically added to the roster for the Event for which they were awarded.
Learn more about setting up and running an Event Lottery here.
