Splitting a class into groups by hand has two quiet problems: it is slow, and it is rarely as fair as it looks. Left to a teacher's on-the-spot choices, the same students end up together, the strong personalities cluster, and one group ends up a person short. A random group generator removes both problems at once — it deals every name out by chance and keeps the group sizes even.
Split a class in two clicks
Open the random group generator, paste your class list (one name per line, or import the list you already saved), choose how you want the groups sized, and generate. Every name is shuffled and dealt into the groups, and you can re-generate as many times as you like for a fresh mix. If you keep a saved roster, you can reuse it every lesson and just re-split.
Two ways to size the groups
The generator gives you two modes, and which one you want depends on how you phrased the task in your head. Choose “number of groups” when you want a fixed count — “make five teams” — and the tool spreads everyone across exactly five groups. Choose “students per group” when the group size is what matters — “groups of four” — and it makes as many groups of four as your class allows. Either way, when the class does not divide evenly, the leftover students are spread one each across the groups rather than piled into a last, oversized one.
Why the split is even, and actually random
Two design choices are doing the work. First, the tool deals names out round-robin — one to each group in turn — instead of slicing the list into chunks, which is why the group sizes never differ by more than one. Second, the order it deals in comes from the browser's cryptographic random source (the same one measured in our fairness test), not the order you typed the names or the alphabet. That combination is what makes the result both even and genuinely unbiased, rather than “random-looking” but quietly favouring whoever sits at the top of the list.
What it does — and what it does not
Be clear about the boundary so the groups do what you need. The generator groups the names on your list at random; it does not know anything about the students, so it will not balance groups by ability, gender, reading level, or who works well together. If you need that kind of balance, arrange or tag the roster yourself first — for example, split into two lists and generate within each. And for a task you repeat across lessons, just re-generate: a fresh shuffle each time keeps the same pairs from forming week after week.
From a class list to fair groups
The point of a group generator is not novelty — it is removing the two things that make hand-picked groups feel unfair: the teacher's unconscious pull toward familiar pairings, and the uneven sizes that come from eyeballing it. Paste the list, pick a mode, and the split is even, random, and done in seconds. For calling on individuals rather than grouping them, the same roster works with the classroom name picker.