1. Skills (e.g., computer, writing, presentation)
2. Previous academic performance
3. Gender
4. Ethnicity

SkillsMatching students with the same skill level tends to generate task completion redundancy. On the other hand, matching students with different skill levels increases team's productivity by having a well-distributed set of tasks and equalizing participation. Measuring skill level takes some time but is always worth the effort.How to Measure Skill Level? How to Measure Skill Level: You might measure a student's skill level by conducting a short questionnaire (for an example, see http://www.foundationcoalition.org/home/keycomponents/teamsurvey.html) that asks students to measure their levels of expertise when working with computers or specific software, writing a report, or conducting a presentation. In addition, you can do several in-class exercises in which students draw from a pot a piece of paper outlining a specific theme (e.g., favorite animal, most memorable trip, etc.) and talk for two or three minutes about that topic, which can give you a sense of a student's public speaking skills. This exercise can also be a writing exercise, or you may ask them to write a statement of purpose. By doing this, you will learn more about your student pool and class composition.How to Equalize Skill Level? Once teams with heterogeneous skill levels are created, it is important to help all team members improve. One way is by having students rotate roles and having members delegate to one another specific tasks that require a certain skill level. For example, a student with lower AutoCAD skills can be responsible for starting the next team graphics assignment with the assistance of the "AutoCAD expert" from his/her team. This way, the person is learning by doing, with guidance from the team's expert. Faculty can also help these students by specifically assigning tasks to these less-skilled students as individual or extra-credit assignments. Faculty may also occasionally give a computer quiz to all team members, but use the lowest grade as the grade for the team. This reinforces individual accountability and encourages students to work toward a common learning goal. However, faculty members should address the resistance that this approach may create in advance.Previous Academic PerformanceConsidering previous academic performance is also an important aspect when forming teams. Avoid matching all the experts or the academically disadvantaged together in one team. The hope is to have the less academically advantageous learn from those students who are considered above average. Again, the goal is to create a well-balanced group with a good blend of skills and learning styles.
Gender and EthnicityOther aspects worth noting are gender and ethnicity. The issues of gender ratio and ethnic ratio have been topics of discussion for many years. Earlier researchers have argued that when women, or any ethnic group, represent a small fraction of a group (i.e., less than 15 percent), the minority member status is considered a token, and this damages general team dynamics.[9] This earlier research suggests that isolating minority students from other minority students or females from other females can in fact be detrimental to the academic success of these individuals because they can become isolated, marginalized, or placed in stereotypical roles and not permitted to flourish. However, later researchers have challenged this theory[10, 11, 12] by suggesting that increasing the number of females in a group will not necessarily lead to positive team dynamics. According to Steele[12] , as an individual's minority status becomes more salient in a group, there is an increase in stereotype threat. Hence, increasing the number of women and/or underrepresented minorities in a group could magnify stereotypes and lead to a more hostile environment.A study at Arizona State University has shown consistency with the second position, in which increasing the number of females and/or minorities can lead to a less stable environment.[13] Females and minorities have reflected on their team arrangements. Most of them agree that team formation should target students' abilities rather than gender or ethnicity. Females and minorities knew that they were placed in a team in pairs, and they also understood why. Nonetheless, students felt that this arrangement didn't impact their individual performances (either positively or negatively).[13] Moreover, underrepresented minorities and women enthusiastically stated that they didn't feel discrimination and were treated as equals by their peers and instructors. Their interest is to be considered individuals with certain academic abilities, knowledge, and personalities instead of being categorized by their gender and/or ethnicity.

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Most teamwork occurs through face-to-face interaction. Therefore, good teamwork requires effective meetings! When forming teams, approximately 90% of the time, students express a problem with finding a common time to meet. In most cases, finding a meeting time outside the classroom is more a hassle and a frustration to students than any assignment or test you give them.Arranging meeting times depends on the size of the team. The larger the team size, the more difficult it is to schedule a common meeting time. One approach that helps in scheduling meetings, necessary for team success, is to create a meeting schedule in which students can write the times when they are in class and/or working and their available times to meet. If this is done early in the semester (by the second week of classes, when course adding and dropping period ends), the team already commits to a common meeting time prior to getting involved in other extracurricular commitments, which tend to evolve a little later in the semester. This is a suggested method for establishing a common meeting time, but other, simpler methods could be used.

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