Ouch! Karl presented our TIPS discussion on red ink to his students and got some pretty unflattering comments. > "They don't have anything better to discuss?" > "They don't have anything better to discuss?" > "Get a life." > "You are kidding, aren't you?" Taken out of context (which I'm soothing my bruised ego by supposing), I suppose our discussion might seem to be on a rather inconsequential topic. But this situation might also engender further discussion in a classroom about how presentation can result in a fundamental attribution error. Certainly it would apply in an undergrad stats class, where the wording of a question can bias the results of a survey. For example: Presentation 1: Our TIPS group has had a discussion for days now about what color ink we should use to grade papers. I think about 25 different contributions were posted. Most of them said there's no reason not to use red, but some said students get turned off by it, so maybe you should use another color like green. What do you think about that? Presentation 2: A student complained to his professor that he was culturally offended by the use of red ink to correct his paper. The professor, wanting to know if there was any basis to his complaint, asked other TIPS members if they'd ever heard anything about problems with use of red ink. It opened up a very interesting discussion with members offering cultural possibilities (but none negative against red ink, except possibly in Korea where red represents death) and ultimately concluding that probably any color you use to correct papers can ultimately result in negative feelings, probably because of the nature of correction itself. What are your thoughts? Beth Benoit University of Massachusetts Lowell ---------- >From: "Karl L. Wuensch" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Subject: Re: Use of red ink >Date: Thu, Apr 22, 1999, 4:56 PM > > I shared with my students (in undergrad stats) the concerns > many of you > have expressed about the color of ink used to grade or comment > student papers. > The most common responses of my students were: > > "They don't have anything better to discuss?" > > "Get a life." > > "You are kidding, aren't you?" > > I guess that means they don't mind that I use red ink. > Actually, a large > proportion of my editorial comments to them are in email. While > those appear > green on my screen as I type them (or red if my spelling checker > finds a word > not in its dictionary), the color when the student reads my mail > depends on > the settings in effect in the student's mailer. >
