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Group formation is an essential process for group development lifecycle. It has been a growing concern to many researchers to be applied automatically in collaborative learning contexts. Forming a group is an atomic process that is affected by various factors. These factors differ depending on the group members characteristics, the context of the grouping process and the techniques used to form the group(s). This paper surveys the recently published work in group formation process providing a systematic literature review in which 30 relevant studies were analyzed. The findings of this review propose two taxonomies. The first one is for the attributes of group formation while the second is for the grouping techniques. Furthermore, we present the main findings and highlight the limitations of existing approaches in computer supported collaborative learning environment. We suggest some potential directions for future research with group formation process in both theoretical and practical aspects. In addition, We emphasize other improvements that may be inter-related with other computing areas such as cloud computing and mobility.

Sacrifice is widely believed to enhance cooperation in churches, communes, gangs, clans, military units, and many other groups. We find that sacrifice can also work in the lab, apart from special ideologies, identities, or interactions. Our subjects play a modified VCM game—one in which they can voluntarily join groups that provide reduced rates of return on private investment. This leads to both endogenous sorting (because free-riders tend to reject the reduced-rate option) and substitution (because reduced private productivity favours increased club involvement). Seemingly unproductive costs thus serve to screen out free-riders, attract conditional cooperators, boost club production, and increase member welfare. The sacrifice mechanism is simple and particularly useful where monitoring difficulties impede punishment, exclusion, fees, and other more standard solutions.

Learners are becoming increasingly divers. They may have much personal, social, cultural, psychological, and cognitive diversity. Forming suitable learning groups represents, therefore, a hard and time-consuming task. In Mobile Computer Supported Collaborative Learning (MCSCL) environments, this task is more difficult. Instructors need to consider many more issues, such as the rapid change of mobile learners' context, their direct and naturel interaction, and the characteristics of mobile devices and networks. This paper presents a systematic literature review (SLR) that examines the relevant solutions for the problem of group formation in MCSCL environments. In the context of this SLR, an initial list of 178 papers was reviewed. After careful analysis of each paper using specific selection criteria and a quality assessment method, a final list of 12 relevant studies was filtered and used to answer the research questions. The findings revealed that: (a) there is a lack of approaches addressing the group formation problem in MCSCL environments; (b) the most proposed solutions do not allow instructors to customize the grouping process; (c) there is no useful solutions to automatically capture and evaluate many of learners' behaviours and context information; (d) the majority of approaches do not support a dynamic formation of learning groups; (e) the majority of approaches do not provide descriptions about the implemented grouping algorithms nor about the evaluation methods. Extracted and synthesized data from the selected studies is discussed in this paper, together with current research gaps and recommendations for further works.

This paper formulates a model that extends the traditional panel discrete choice model to include social/spatial dependencies in the form of dyadic interactions between each pair of decision-makers. In addition, the formulation accommodates spatial correlation effects as well as allows a global spatial structure to be placed on the individual-specific unobserved response sensitivity to exogenous variables. We interpret these latter two effects, sometimes referred to as spatial drift effects, as originating from endogenous group formation. To our knowledge, we are the first to suggest this endogenous group formation interpretation for spatial drift effects in the social/spatial interactions literature. The formulation is motivated in a travel mode choice context, but is applicable in a wide variety of other empirical contexts. Bhat’s (Transp Res B 45(7):923–939, 2011) maximum approximate composite marginal likelihood (MACML) procedure is used for model estimation. A simulation exercise indicates that the MACML approach recovers the model parameters very well, even in the presence of high spatial dependence and endogenous group formation tendency. In addition, the simulation results demonstrate that ignoring spatial dependence and endogenous group formation when both are actually present will lead to bias in parameter estimation.

This study investigated how group formation method, namely student-selected vs. teacher-assigned, influences group dynamics as well as group outcome. In line with its experimental comparison group design, two intact classes of junior English Literature students (N=32) participated in this study over one academic semester. Community model was employed to teach creative writing to both classes, but, while in one class students (N=16) were required to self-select their working partners, in the other they were assigned into groups by the teacher, based on their learning styles (N=16). The quantitative and qualitative data, obtained through students' initial writing drafts, revised texts and an end of the course written report, underwent One way Analysis Of Variance (ANOVA) and content analysis. The findings indicated that although teacher-assigned groups had no definite advantage over those of student-selected in terms of group dynamics, they noticeably outperformed student-selected groups in terms of outcome. In particular, teacher-assigned groups were more task oriented and thus more successful at accomplishing group task -here revision. The results suggest that group formation method is a contributing factor to the success of group work.

We take cohorts of entering freshmen at the United States Air Force Academy and assign half to peer groups designed to maximize the academic performance of the lowest ability students. Our assignment algorithm uses nonlinear peer effects estimates from the historical pre-treatment data, in which students were randomly assigned to peer groups. We find a negative and significant treatment effect for the students we intended to help. We provide evidence that within our \"optimally\" designed peer groups, students avoided the peers with whom we intended them to interact and instead formed more homogeneous subgroups. These results illustrate how policies that manipulate peer groups for a desired social outcome can be confounded by changes in the endogenous patterns of social interactions within the group.

Even though painful experiences are employed within social rituals across the world, little is known about the social effects of pain. We examined the possibility that painful experiences can promote cooperation within social groups. In Experiments 1 and 2, we induced pain by asking some participants to insert their hands in ice water and to perform leg squats. In Experiment 3, we induced pain by asking some participants to eat a hot chili pepper. Participants performed these tasks in small groups. We found evidence for a causal link: Sharing painful experiences with other people, compared with a no-pain control treatment, promoted trusting interpersonal relationships by increasing perceived bonding among strangers (Experiment 1) and increased cooperation in an economic game (Experiments 2 and 3). Our findings shed light on the social effects of pain, demonstrating that shared pain may be an important trigger for group formation.

Animals can congregate in groups for many reasons, from reproductive assurance to improved foraging or predation efficiency, to avoiding themselves becoming the target of predation by other animals. It is the last category that is the focus of this review: group living as protection from predation. The drivers of group life in the face of danger are at the same time diverse and interlinked, with much potential for confusion between concepts. Here we review these concepts, using the dilution effect as a starting point. We construct a mathematical model that allows us to examine various features of the dilution effect and their connection to ecology. We also show the importance of including a time scale when modelling the dilution effect and how this translates into more realistic estimation of the fitness consequences of a diluted predation risk. The central role of the dilution effect in creating safety in numbers is underlined by showing how it may affect life-history evolution and result in the emergence of gregarious life-history strategies, even among sessile organisms limited in their abilities to exhibit behavioural responses to predation. Finally, we review the other central processes underpinning group protection from predation: the satiation effect, selfish herding, the confusion effect and group vigilance.

We integrated research on emotion and on small groups to address a fundamental and enduring question facing alcohol researchers: What are the specific mechanisms that underlie the reinforcing effects of drinking? In one of the largest alcohol-administration studies yet conducted, we employed a novel group-formation paradigm to evaluate the socioemotional effects of alcohol. Seven hundred twenty social drinkers (360 male, 360 female) were assembled into groups of 3 unacquainted persons each and given a moderate dose of an alcoholic, placebo, or control beverage, which they consumed over 36 min. These groups' social interactions were video recorded, and the duration and sequence of interaction partners' facial and speech behaviors were systematically coded (e.g., using the Facial Action Coding System). Alcohol consumption enhanced individual- and group-level behaviors associated with positive affect, reduced individual-level behaviors associated with negative affect, and elevated self-reported bonding. Our results indicate that alcohol facilitates bonding during group formation. Assessing nonverbal responses in social contexts offers new directions for evaluating the effects of alcohol.

While rumors predominate in conflict settings, researchers have not identified whether and why they influence the start of organized armed conflict. In this paper, we advance a new conceptualization of initial rebel group formation that aims to do so. We present a simple game-theoretic network model to show why the structure of trusted communication networks among civilians where rebel groups form—which carry credible rumors about the rebels—can influence whether incipient rebels become viable. We argue further that in rural Sub-Saharan Africa, kinship network structures favorable to nascent rebels often underlie ethnically homogeneous localities, but not heterogeneous ones. In doing so, we advance a new explanation for why ethnicity influences conflict onset, and show why ethnic grievances may not be a necessary condition for the emergence of “ethnic rebellion.” We illustrate our arguments using new evidence from Uganda that provides a rare window into rebel group formation.