Contrasting Automatic and Manual Group Formation: A Case Study in a Software Engineering Postgraduate Course

This paper proposes the comparison of a group formation approach based on an evolutionary algorithm with a manual approach performed by an instructor with ten years of experience on this task. The groups were created based on the professional, psychological, and experience profile of each student. The results obtained demonstrated the algorithm’s potential, reaching an average similarity of \(83.46\%\) with the groups formed manually by the instructor.