Abstract
Facebook is regarded as a new field and has been popular among young students. For constructing knowledge, online group discussions is one of the methods teachers often use. Grouping is essential while carrying out online discussions. However, there has not been much literature focusing on the issues of how gender differences and grouping can affect learning achievements. Therefore, it is expected in this study to apply quantitative analysis and sequential analysis to explore the differences of learning achievements from online discussions on a basis of gender grouping. The results of the study will serve as a reference for grouping of future online discussions and related suggestions are also made here. The results from the performance of online discussions show that female students were good at negotiations and clarifications of meanings while male students were good at providing evidence to support the ideas and answers raised by group members during discussions and clarifying details. Based on the above mentioned results, it is suggested that mixed-gender groups can be adopted for online discussions. Meanwhile, it is encouraged to have the students influenced reciprocally by online discussions through specialization and cooperation so as to achieve the goal of knowledge construction.