Quick reponse to A strange result

My previous post ‘A strange response’ generated some questions around the difference between high and low achieving students and how they use the learning management system (LMS) discussion forum. David suggested looking for the difference in complexity in the postings between high and low achieving students. The following chart is the start of that process. Note if your having trouble understanding the context of this post, have a read of the previous post and its comments. This is the average number of characters in student posts and student replies on the LMS discussion forum grouped by their resulting grades.

I know the next chart is very ‘dodgy’, but I quickly wanted to know whether high achieving students asked more questions than low achieving students. So I counted the number of question marks in the posts and replies for all the students in my sample. Note the sample size is over 8000 student courses. This is the average number of questions marks per post and reply for each of the student grade groups.

Obviously these results are not scientific, but they certainly create a path for further investigation. Please feel free to share your thoughts on what these charts might mean and perhaps avenues for further investigation.