Multidimensional Scaling for Selecting Small Groups in College Courses

Many college courses use group work as a part of the learning and evaluation process. Class groups are often selected randomly or by allowing students to organize groups themselves. However, if it is desired to control some aspect of the group structure, such as increasing schedule compatibility within groups, mul-tidimensional scaling can be used to form such groups. This article describes how this has been adopted in an undergradu-ate statistics course. Resulting groups have been more homo-geneous with respect to student schedules than groups selected randomly—an example from winter quarter 2004 increased cor-relations between student schedules from a mean of.29 before grouping to a within-group mean of.50. Further, the exercise allows opportunities to discuss a wealth of statistical concepts in class, including surveys, association measures, multidimen-sional scaling, and statistical graphics