Friends, Over the last couple semesters, I have helped a fellow on campus here organize his 345 students into teams using the "Big Five Inventory" (BFI). The BFI is a personality meta-inventory, that boils down hundreds of other personality inventories into five main factors. The factors are: 1. Extraversion 2. Agreeableness 3. Openness 4. Conscientiousness 5. Neuroticism (emotional stability) More info on the BFI here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits) Anyhoo, I made a Blackboard test of the 44 item short-form BFI instrument. Once students have taken the test, we download the results into Excel, and run a little macro I made that calculates BFI scores for each student. A little tweaking with Excel's "Sort & Filter" and: TaDAH! Well-rounded teams. For your team-formation delight, I have attached everything you need to do this (as long as you use Blackboard at your campus AND you have Excel 2007 or later). 1) The Blackboard test (which I "exported" and you can "import" into your class). 2) The Excel sheet with macro in it (you must have Excel 2007 or later--earlier versions won't work). 3) A little handout I made to walk you through the process, screenshot by screenshot. Enjoy! -M Michael Sweet, Ph.D. Faculty Development Specialist Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) University of Texas Austin MAI 2206 * (512) 232-1775 "Teaching is the profession that makes all other professions possible." - Todd Witaker