Team Maker

Choosing the number of groups is what you want when the constraint is on your side — four corners of the room, three laptops, two referees. Choosing people per group is what you want when the activity dictates the size, like pairs for a conversation drill or fives for a futsal team.

The two produce different results from the same list. Thirty students in five groups gives you groups of six. Thirty students in groups of five gives you six groups. Which one you need depends on whether you are short of space or short of time.

Twenty-two people into four groups does not divide evenly. Rather than filling three groups and leaving the remainder stranded in a small fourth, names are dealt out one at a time around the groups like cards.

The result is groups of six, six, five and five — never five, five, five and seven. No group ends up noticeably larger or smaller than the others, which matters when the group size affects how much each person gets to do.

Letting people choose their own groups reliably produces the same cliques every time, and it makes the last person picked visible to everyone in the room. That cost falls hardest on the students who can least afford it.

Random assignment removes the choice and therefore the message. It also mixes people who would not otherwise work together, which is usually the point of group work in the first place.

If a grouping is unworkable — two people who cannot sit together, or every strong student in one team — press shuffle again. Randomness is a tool for fairness, not a rule you have to obey once it has spoken.

Bear in mind that the split is uniformly random and knows nothing about ability, so it will not balance teams by skill. If you need that, sort your list into tiers first and run the tool once per tier. To pick a single name rather than split a list, use the Randomizer at cerdikcerdik.com/tools/randomizer.