Abstract-Cooperative learning is an instructional approach in which students work together in small groups in order to achieve a common academic goal. In the context of cooperative learning, students in classrooms tend to learn more by sharing their experiences and knowledge. In addition, a diversity of educational backgrounds and student learning styles can be used to build heterogeneous groups of students. In this paper, we propose an approach for the group composition, regarding the index of learning styles (ILS) questionnaire and prior educational knowledge in order to achieve the mechanism for equity among groups and ensure that heterogeneous students are distributed optimally within the group formation. This causes the search for an optimized group composition of all students to become a more complex and becomes a timeconsuming task. Therefore, the proposed algorithm mimics the natural process of a genetic algorithm in order to achieve optimal solutions. In addition, we have implemented our algorithm to construct student groups. A case study shows that the algorithm enhances the quality of the group formation of heterogeneous students leading to better solutions.

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Working in groups has become increasingly important in order to develop students' skills. However, it can be more successful when peers cooperate and are involved in the assigned tasks. However, several educators firmly show disadvantages when all peers received the same reward, regardless of individual contribution. Some teachers also considering peer assessment to be time and effort consuming because preparation and monitoring are needed. In order to overcome these problems, we have developed a web-based peer assessment referred to as the ‘Scoring by Peer Assessment System’ (SPAS) that allows teachers to set up the process of peer assessment, in order to assign scores that reflect the contribution of each student. Moreover, a web-based application allows students to evaluate their peers regarding their individual contribution where cooperative learning and peer assessment are used. The paper describes the system design and the implementation of our peer assessment application.

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At present, mobile devices are a medium of learning in school that is enjoyable with educational content. They are becoming as a part of daily life with new software games, which are considered as entertainment. As we all know, a word search game has been implemented on mobile devices for decades. It facilitates English vocabulary acquisition of students. The word search game on mobile devices allows education to be delivered in a more flexible way, anytime and anywhere at the students’ own place. To this paper, a survey is conducted to target Thai students at Bangkok University, Thailand. Therefore the word search game on smart phones embedded with the English dictionary, which helps Thai students to memorize the words is developed. Additionally, the process in developing the word search game on smart phones has been presented. It is expected that our research findings in English learning on mobile devices for Thai students will be further shared in the future.