  Underrepresented students face many significant challenges in their
education. In particular, they often have a harder time than their peers from
majority groups in building long-term high-quality study groups. This challenge
is exacerbated in remote-learning scenarios, where students are unable to meet
face-to-face and must rely on pre-existing networks for social support.
  We present a scalable system that removes structural obstacles faced by
underrepresented students and supports all students in building inclusive and
flexible study groups. One of our main goals is to make the traditionally
informal and unstructured process of finding study groups for homework more
equitable by providing a uniform but lightweight structure. We aim to provide
students from underrepresented groups an experience that is similar in quality
to that of students from majority groups. Our process is unique in that it
allows students the opportunity to request group reassignments during the
semester if they wish. Unlike other collaboration tools our system is not
mandatory and does not use peer-evaluation.
  We trialed our approach in a 1000+ student introductory Engineering and
Computer Science course that was conducted entirely online during the COVID-19
pandemic. We find that students from underrepresented backgrounds were more
likely to ask for group-matching support compared to students from majority
groups. At the same time, underrepresented students that we matched into study
groups had group experiences that were comparable to students we matched from
majority groups. B-range students in high-comfort and high-quality groups had
improved learning outcomes.
