Smart grouping tool portal for collaborative learning

Learning theory in education has progressed dramatically with the rapid development of modern technologies. Modern learning theory has found that learning performance can be improved effectively through cooperative/ collaborative learning. How to group students in one class based on their different learning capabilities is a key to success in education. Two grouping types of homogeneous and heterogeneous have been applied into class grouping. Research proves that homogeneous groups are good at specific goal and heterogeneous groups are better in expanded tasks. Learning efficiency is affected in both group level and individual level by different grouping method. However grouping students in an optimal way is a difficult NP-hard research problem with high complexity; and to achieve the best results, such grouping can be very time consuming and tedious for the teachers to perform manually, especially when local cultural context (for instance, gender parameter) has to be taken into account, such as in the Middle East region. So the ability of allowing educators to define rules describing groups is very important for both homogeneous and heterogeneous grouping capabilities. This paper thus describes a smart grouping tool portal which is easy to access and user friendly, and aims to assist teachers to automatically group students based on different criteria. This portal has been trialled at Khalifa University of Science, Technology & Research (KUSTAR). A case study of the trial has also been analyzed to illustrate the derivative benefits of our smart grouping tool portal.