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Visibly Random Groupings


About six months ago I was browsing on twitter when I came across some Maths education people tweeting about #VRG, #VNPS and #thinkingclassroom. This led me down a wonderful rabbit hole of figuring out what these mysterious acronyms stood for. In today’s blog post I’m going to focus on #VRG which, I discovered, stands for Visibly Random Groups. Visibly Random groups is an idea put forward by Peter Liljedahl. 

Usually when it comes to carrying out some group work in the classroom there are two standard ways that the groups are formed. Either the students themselves pick the groups or the teacher picks the groups. When the teacher picks the groups, there is usually some underlying reason that the groups are assigned in this way. Perhaps the teacher wants to make sure that there is one strong student in each group. Or maybe the teacher wants to split up some students who tend to be chatty. When the students pick the groups they will tend to pick groups with their friends. In visibly random groups there is no such agenda. The groups are chosen by chance and this is visible to the students.

Lilejdahl claims that there are many benefits to creating visibly random groups in the Mathematics classroom. 

Positive effects of using Visibly Random Groupings include:
  • Students become more willing to work with whatever group they are assigned to.
  • Students learn better from each other.
  • Social barriers within the group are lessened.
  • Students rely less on the teacher to provide the answers.
  • Engagement and enthusiasm are increased.


FlipQuiz Random Group Generator
The actual mechanics of creating the visibly random groups can be done in lots of ways. I personally use an online random group generator. My tool of choice is part of flipquiz. You just input the student names or copy and paste from a list and generate random groups. I do this on the overhead projector so that students see that the groups are random and can also see who they should team up with.

I do find the method of Visibly Random Groups to be surprisingly simple and effective.  My groupwork seems to have become a lot more successful. I also really like the effect it has on the dynamic of the class. The students get to know each other better and build rapport. 

 I often use the random group generator when I feel the energy in the room is taking a dip. It's a great excuse to get the students up on their feet and moving around. Sometimes this, together with a change of partner, can be enough to break the lesson up a little and give the students another burst of energy.




Liljedahl P. (2014) The Affordances of Using Visibly Random Groups in a Mathematics Classroom. In: Li Y., Silver E., Li S. (eds) Transforming Mathematics Instruction. Advances in Mathematics Education. Springer, Cham

 Laura Wheeler's great blog post on VRG and VNPS


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