This paper explores the emotional responses that assignment feedback can provoke in first year undergraduates. The literature on the link between emotions and learning is well established, but surprisingly research on the relationship between emotions and feedback is still relatively scarce. This article aims to make an additional contribution to this emerging field. Semistructured interviews with 24 first year undergraduate students from the Humanities and Social Sciences in a post-1992 institution were conducted. The interview narratives identified how the emotional impact of feedback was related to: prior experiences of education, the significance participants attached to the feedback received on their first assignment and how their interpretations of feedback comments were linked to beliefs about themselves as learners. The implications of these experiences on student 'belonging' and learning are discussed. The underlying themes that emerged from the findings are the polarised emotions of anxiety and confidence. Based on the findings the paper concludes by making recommendations for reconceptualising feedback on first year assignments. It suggests that a holistic assessment approach which incorporates timely feedback indicating if students are 'on the right lines' with low stakes assignments is a practice that may both reduce anxiety and increase confidence to support students.

The feedback that students receive on their assignments has been subject to a great deal of debate in universities across the globe. Whereas academics regularly complain that students do not engage with feedback by citing uncollected coursework, students repeatedly protest about the timeliness and quality of feedback, citing illegible, overly critical and a lack of verbal feedback. In this article we report on the findings of feedback practices from a survey of 308 undergraduate students studying combined degree programmes of Politics, History and International Relations at two British universities. This article seeks to offer a clearer understanding of the feedback practices that students want and from the analysis of the research findings we offer a range of strategies for improving feedback practices.

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