Leo
FAQs

Yes. DaVinci Education has been an approved vendor (under our original name) since the inception of the CI project. We have built in all the business rules of the reporting process, which means any errors in your data can be spotted and fixed before pushing your report to the AAMC. We offer a push-button process for you to review and submit your own CI data, but typically we will meet with each client school prior to the reporting period each year to walk through your curriculum data and make sure everything’s good to go.

Yes. While most schools are still piloting the definition of EPAs (Entrustable Professional Activities), we have already built that framework into our architecture. The EPAs are not required as part of the Curriculum Inventory report, but they may help you get a clearer picture of how well-prepared your students are for residency and practice.

Yes. You can define multiple competency sets in Leo, and any of those competencies can be mapped to your program objectives. So if you develop a new set of competencies, you simply have to map that new set to your objectives. Then everywhere those objectives have already been mapped, those elements will also inherit the new competency set across your whole curriculum.

If you’re coming off working with spreadsheets or text documents, the idea of mapping objectives, session objectives, competencies and themes across your entire curriculum is probably not a pleasant thought. But Leo is built to help make that mapping process much easier to manage. While we are not subject matter experts, we have seen a lot of different schools tackle the challenge of curriculum mapping and can offer you excellent guidance and support as you begin the mapping process or look at revising your curriculum.

Yes. The Leo course rollover function lets you copy all of the data from a previous instance of a course into a new instance. This preserves goals and objectives, course materials, faculty and staff assignments and other key data that used to be entered manually. Virtually all curricular elements can be cloned or rolled over, including exams, linked events and small group assignments. Leo also features management functions to allow course coordinators to more easily adjust the course after rollover, including a Course Checklist to quickly verify the status of the new course.

Yes. Leo offers a robust small group management function that gives staff administrators broad control and flexibility to create and manage small group assignments. Once established, the structure of these small groups can be rolled over to future courses and events. Tools for “linked events” allow materials to be shared across multiple instances of the same event (lab sessions, for example.) Students will only see their particular small group events on their calendar, but staff can manage small groups quickly and easily.

Yes. Leo offers full-text search and can index any text-based document that is uploaded to the system. This includes MS Word and PowerPoint files, spreadsheets, weblinks and PDFs. Leo also knows how to search the curriculum based on session objectives, names and descriptions of course and events, meta-data assigned to course content and specific keywords assigned to events. Search results link back to the source to show you where that element is utilized. Current search filters include program, academic year, school year, and course.

Yes. Leo provides a lottery system that allows users to rank-order their preferences from a defined list of courses. The system then allocates space in the courses based on the student’s rank-order, and it will randomly select from the pool of equal rank-orders in the case of over-subscription. Our lottery module also has a first-come, first-serve option, called a signup sheet, to augment the rank-order functionality. Students will see both the signup sheets and lotteries in the reminder window each time they log in to the system for ease of access.

Yes. Leo offers robust discussion boards to facilitate student and faculty communication:

• Discussion boards can be public or private. If set as private, specific instructors and/or students can be added to a discussion, and post updates/reminders can be sent.
• Discussion boards include a WYSIWYG editor to allow rich text formatting.
• Instructions can be attached at the top of a discussion.
• When new posts are added, you can elect to send automated email reminders to students and/or faculty who are assigned to a discussion.
• Faculty can click a student’s name from the list of assigned students to see all posts made by a selected student.

Yes. The Leo messaging system is tied into the curriculum so that announcements can be created from a course or event and will be directed to only the student and/or faculty and staff in that event. However, messaging options are highly flexible: additional users and groups can be added to any announcement, and any existing users or groups can be removed. Announcements can be sent internally and/or sent by email, and can include documents and links to external materials.

If any new (unread) announcements exist for a particular user, they will pop up in a reminder window whenever the user logs in. A history of all announcements is maintained so a user can view all posts sent or received. Unlike email, announcements also allow administrators to know which users have actually been exposed to an announcement.

Yes. Leo allows you to create an unlimited number of dropbox-like folders in any event, and there are options to specify dates of availability and passwords. Faculty can view a list of students who have uploaded the assignment, as well as a list of those who have not yet uploaded the assignment, and messages can be sent to the non-compliant students.

Leo also includes a grading and comment mechanism with the ability to push out the grades to our course-based Gradebook tool. Documents can be graded and the commented version of the document can be returned to the students via a delivery mechanism that is private and linked only to the student.

Leo gives you the ability to upload virtually any type of image, content or media files. Courses, events, exam questions and responses may contain an unlimited number of images and multimedia resources. Leo is LTI- and SCORM-compliant.

Leo can store materials at both the course and event levels. Material that is applicable across the entire course (for example, a syllabus)  is normally posted in the course screen, while the actual content for an event should be posted directly to that event. Materials can also be distributed via course announcements.

You can hide or reveal access to content or assignments by specifying date ranges of availability, adding password protection, or marking material as deleted or as “faculty only.” You can also restrict access to specific users or groups. Leo even gives you option to time-release content, including the ability to make materials available within a particular session (eg, 15 minutes after an event begins, or 5 minutes before the event ends).

At your discretion, students can easily be given access to course materials across all four years. This is helpful, for example, if you want to allow your fourth-year students to review the current first-year materials (rather than the material that was available in their first year, which may be outdated). Leo has a very flexible tool for granting access to non-enrolled students that can be set at the course, event and document level. So you can open up as much of your curriculum as you wish, while at the same time securing any elements you need to restrict.

Yes, Leo’s design is fully responsive so students can use multiple devices to access their materials.

Leo offers 360-degree evaluations with the ability for administrators to review, modify, summarize and push student evaluation results to the gradebook. Different degrees of anonymity can be configured for evaluation reporting. Clinical faculty can receive evaluation links via email, avoiding the need for them to log in to Leo directly.

Leo delivers engaging low-stakes formative assessments including team-based learning events with electronic scratch-off forms, with a grading mechanism based on the number of choices required to reach the correct answer. The system also includes modules for leading post-exam discussions based on the assessment. Leo also gives you the ability to re-score, eliminate questions and create multiple correct answers on the fly.

Leo offers many tools for live monitoring of assessments and feedback, including:

• The number of students eligible to access take the assessment
• The number who have not yet started
• The number who are currently taking the assessment
• The number who have answered all questions in the assessment
• The number who have actually submitted the assessment

In addition, a histogram shows in real time which questions have been answered and whether those answers are correct or incorrect. You can also see a detailed report of any given student’s responses in real time, at any time.

Yes. Course directors can add new questions directly into the system. They can also search through all questions that have been created in the system to build a customized question bank for their course. That question bank is then available for all exams created within the course. There is also an option that lets faculty create questions based on their lecture, and these questions are sent directly to the course question bank.

Leo offers you multiple question bank options such as:

• Faculty can create questions after an event, and these questions become part of the question bank for the course.
• Course Directors / Staff can, on a per-course basis, gather questions from the entire body of questions and copy them into a course-specific question bank. The bank is available to all sections of the course in all years.
• Course Directors / Staff can create new questions and add them to the question bank.
• Editors for a given exam can select questions from the course question bank on any exam for the course.
• Questions may also be pushed directly from exams back into the question bank for future use.
• Randomized questions and responses can be created.

Question types in Leo include true/false, multiple choice, matching, multiple select, free text (essay), and short answer with pre-defined range of correctness. Randomized questions and responses can also be created, and new question types can be added as required. We also offer customizable templates for multiple choice questions. In addition, Leo  offers electronic scratch-off forms for TBL events.

For question control, Leo allows students to scratch off options for elimination and to flag questions for review, which can be filtered in several ways. We also provide a visual map of questions for quick navigation through a large exam.

Leo can randomize the order of questions and/or responses within questions, on both a per-user and per-exam basis.

Leo offers many reports based on assessment data, including a sophisticated point bi-serial item analysis for each exam and multiple feedback screens for students across a course. In addition, all questions can be linked back to objectives and their related competencies for improved accreditation reporting.

Assessments can be set up with a number of feedback settings, such as:

• No feedback
• List of questions answered
• List of questions answered + response
• List of questions answered + response + correctness
• Option to generate a customized PDF document that can be downloaded by the student or emailed to them.

In addition, super-immediate feedback (SIF) is an option that allows students to see feedback on questions and answers as they are taking an exam. SIF helps you turn the exam system into a learning tool so your students don’t just see the correct answers – they can actually understand why their answers were right or wrong.

Yes. For every course in the system, there is a Gradebook where all the graded scores are housed. External assessment results can be uploaded from spreadsheets or other assessment tools that can export structured data. Evaluations that are scored can also be pushed to the Gradebook. The Leo Gradebook shows statistics such as median, mode, and standard deviation per component.

Assessments can be grouped by category, and the Gradebook can assign raw scores, weighted or percentage values (this can differ within a given course by section or rotation). These values and the actual scores of the exams can be used to generate a grade based on your own grading matrix.

Leo also offers a grading and comment mechanism where student documents can be graded and the commented version can be returned to the student via a private delivery mechanism. These graded assignments can also be pushed out to the course-based Gradebook tool. Faculty and/or staff can also grade student participation in discussions and export those scores to the Gradebook.

The Leo Gradebook offers components and categories that can be set to “critical” so that a student must meet a passing score in that critical component in order to get a passing score for the category, or must meet a passing score in the overall category to pass the course. These features can be used in combination.

Leo also offers Gradebook Templates which allow you to set up assignments, categories and other structural elements of the Gradebook for a particular course and then push that template out across selected sections/rotations of the course. This can save several hours of effort for course managers.

To provide a bigger picture, Leo can compile the Gradebooks from all instances of a course at a particular campus, or all the rotations of a given course at all campuses/locations where that course is administered.

Each entry in the Gradebook can be manually adjusted and scores from the Gradebook can be exported to a spreadsheet (.csv format) for use in other applications.

Leo is your teacher’s assistant for implementing synchronous and asynchronous active learning methods to positively influence student learning and retention. The platform includes several features that enable faculty to actively engage students with course content, including:

• Virtual IRAT/GRAT scratch cards to drive proper use of team-based learning
• Organizing content in each event to support the flipped classroom
• Creating randomized student groups in advance of peer-to-peer learning
• Embedding interactive SCORM files for self-paced learning
• Allows students to anonymously score each other in peer evaluations

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Leo is built on a LAMP stack, using PHP, MySQL and JavaScript running on Linux servers. The server platform is RedHat Enterprise Linux and the database backend is MySQL.

Leo works on any current desktop operating system (Windows, Mac or Linux) running a current version of any major browser (Firefox, Chrome, Safari, IE, Opera). Leo is delivered entirely by browser and does not require flash, java, or any other browser add-ons.

Yes. Leo can integrate with multiple single sign-on mechanisms including LDAP and SAML-based identity providers such as ADFS, Azure, OKTA and Shibboleth. DaVinci Education is a member of the InCommon Federation.

Visiting faculty or students can be added to the system without requiring central authentication credentials; a local user name and password will allow them to authenticate directly against Leo. There is no anonymous “guest” access allowed by Leo.

Yes. As part of your implementation process, Leo can establish integrations with your registrar or student information systems to develop an automated feed of users, courses and registrations that can run on a nightly basis.

We provide cloud hosting through Amazon Web Services (AWS) because it has been proven to offer lower total cost of ownership for our client schools. We administer all servers and establish daily, weekly and monthly backup processes so your technical team does not have to add to their workload. Cloud hosting also allows us to monitor server performance more closely and address any issues more quickly than is possible in an internally-hosted environment.

In addition to user-based security restrictions and our robust Account Manager configuration settings, Leo offers a CSP utility to customize cross site scripting and security options. Our CSP module meets the CSP 2.0 standard.

We offer a single Enterprise license option for Leo, because all the modules are built to work together to give you the most complete picture of your curriculum. The more you do with Leo, the easier it will be to understand and address areas of challenges – and see evidence of growth – across your entire program.