8.2 Fair allocation

It is important to allocate students to groups fairly.

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This bundle allocates students to groups so that no group is perceived to be stronger or "better" than any other.

The way it works is that the supervisor compiles a list of the students in the cohort ranked by ability (for example, by the previous year's examination marks). If the cohort needs to be divided into G groups, numbered 0 to G-1, the student ranked R is put in group (R mod G). If this initial division produces a group that the supervisor knows is unsatisfactory (for example, it comprises a group of close friends, or has unfortunate gender divisions) some tweaking by hand may be beneficial to achieve the final allocation.

Alternatively, you can simply rank the students in alphabetical order and divide as above.

It works better if you have a large cohort of students; it is also a very cheap mechanism to implement and perceived to be no less fair than any other random allocation.

It doesn't work unless you assume (perhaps erroneously) that examination marks are a guide to how well individuals will perform in a team context.

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So: use an allocation mechanism that disadvantages neither an individual student nor a student group.