Group Formation in Computer Supported Collaborative Learning Environments: A Systematic Review
Abstract: Group formation in collaborative learning tasks often presents itself as challenging and a time-consuming task. Instructors are tasked with grouping students in meaningful ways to facilitate learning, yet there is not a clear and concise way to group students. This review is intended to provide an overview of the current literature regarding group formations in computer-supported collaborative learning environments. The framework used to collect and analyze articles by investigating the strategies used to group students, the diversity among and within groups, criterion used in the grouping process, and various characteristics of the groupings. Thirty articles are included in the review and analyzed based on the proposed framework. Extracted and synthesized data from the selected studies are discussed in this paper, together with current research gaps and recommendation for further works.