Previous studies on the factors that can affect self-esteem and clinical skills during training among bachelor’s-level nursing students in Belgium have shown that internships – and evaluation and feedback moments, more specifically – were key points in that process. We did a study to better understand how students experience those moments and which specific aspects of feedback are involved. This article focuses on how feedback is experienced and on the consequences of that in terms of learning. Here we identify the aspects of feedback that can result in positive or negative experiences, with different implications for learning. Our findings highlight the key role that – along with valence – the focus and tone of feedback plays. In addition, students’ lived experience can heighten or dampen their motivation to act on feedback and affect how they regulate their learning behavior when feedback is experienced either positively or negatively. Generally speaking, students show resistance or rejection when feedback is experienced negatively. While these results are consistent with other studies, further research is needed to explore the emotional process at work in feedback processing.

Motivational self-regulation (MSR) is recognized as a situated process, yet most research examines it independently of the motivational challenge that triggers it. Grounded in Situated Expectancy–Value Theory, this mixed-methods study examined how 60 university students reported self-regulating motivation across three scenarios: low subjective task value, low success expectancy, and high perceived opportunity cost. Written responses were coded using deductive and inductive categorical content analysis and compared using Friedman tests. Strategy mobilization varied significantly across scenarios: Environmental control predominated under low subjective task value, Cognitive strategies and Disengagement predominated under low success expectancy, and Need satisfaction was more salient under high opportunity cost. Inductive coding also identified three underrecognized strategies—Active procrastination, Need satisfaction, and Situational goal adjustment—extending existing MSR taxonomies. Under low success expectancy, few strategies directly targeted the underlying motivational problem, with students favoring self-protective coping, suggesting a narrow repertoire for regulating motivation when success appears unlikely.