Formation of Student Groups with the Help of Optimization

We study the problem of forming groups of students so that the groups are as even as possible with respect to certain aspects, and formulate it as a mixed integer programming problem. We find that standard software cannot solve real life sized instances, so we develop several heuristics and metaheuristics for the problem. Computational tests are made on randomly generated instances as well as real life instances. Some of the heuristics give good solutions in short time, and tests on real life problems indicate that satisfactory solutions can be found within 60 seconds