Clever Groups is a preference-based group generator that optimizes group satisfaction and saves countless hours and days of work for people organizing people.

Teachers use Clever Groups to distribute students into rooms on trips with ease; create groups for seating charts and class activities; or finalise year groups based on student (and/or teacher)  preferences. With Clever Groups, if preferred by the teacher, each student in a class can submit a list of preferences of who they want to be in a group with, from most to least. However the teacher is always in control and can upload or even enter preferences manually, and control the outcomes and block pairs of students.

This is a democratic alternative to the traditional ways of creating groups. The groups are created by a deterministic algorithm that seeks to maximize overall satisfaction based on the preferences submitted by the students. There can be multiple solutions from this deterministic algorithm and Clever Groups uses a further algorithm that takes into account how many times each student has been in a group with another student into account when creating the groups. For example if two students has a third student as their first priority the first student might pair up with the third student, but next time the second student will pair up with the third student instead.

When creating random groups there is a risk of creating dysfunctional groups. When students make their own groups, they will often only form groups with their close friends. By submitting anonymous preferences, students can break down social barriers and get into groups with people they have not tried working with before. Of course, if a group did not work out for a student, the student can always change his or her preferences, if allowed by the teacher.