摘要：as longtime writing across the curriculum advocates, we have often benefitted from working with colleagues across and within disciplinary settings. The rewards have usually accrued for us in the form of shared insights about rhetorical values for specific genres of writing and unique approaches to teaching students to improve as writers. Like most WAC consultants, we have reciprocated by assisting faculty with assignment design and offering tips on responding to student work. This latter area has been a particular concern for us because of the ambivalence many of our colleagues feel when giving feedback to students and when facilitating peer response activities. In our respective administrative roles as WAC Director and Associate Dean of the School of Liberal Arts, we recognize the potential for quality faculty and peer feedback to promote student learning, but we also understand the frustration that instructors experience regarding their efforts to respond to student work. As a means of addressing these widely-shared concerns, we recently set out to expand our understanding of the dynamics of response, both by learning more from the existing literature on the topic and through an enhanced focus on response as it occurred within our own institutional settings. After carrying out a year-long research project on student perceptions of faculty and peer feedback to student work in the areas of writing and design, we have begun to develop a focus on “response cultures” across the curriculum that has produced not only a stronger collaborative network for WAC initiatives, but also several interesting initial reflections about feedback. We hope our study and these resulting reflections will encourage other WAC consultants and faculty to explore—and learn from—the response cultures within their own institutions.
