An Integer Linear Programming Model for Team Formation in the Classroom with Constraints

Teamwork is essential in many industries to tackle complex projects. Thus, the development of teamwork skills is crucial in higher education. In the classroom, the formation of teams must be fostered throughout all phases to promote the development of these skills. Several criteria for forming teams in the classroom have been proposed, including Belbin’s role taxonomy or Myers-Briggs type indicator. However, finding optimal teams or partitions of members into teams is a highly combinatorial problem that requires of optimization techniques. This paper presents an integer linear programming model for team formation in the classroom that includes constraints requested by lecturers and allows for the incorporation of different team evaluation heuristics. We study the performance and the scalability of the model using different solvers, conditions, and problem instance types.