"Students generate and prioritize a list of their learning goals at the beginning of the academic term, a unit of study, or a specific learning activity. If time permits students can estimate the relative difficulty of achieving these learning goals."

"Goal identification can be a powerful focusing activity for helping students to become conscious of what they hope to accomplish and encouraging them to accept responsibility for their learning. Identifying what they want to learn can help students better recognize and resist distractions and better organize their time and resources to be more successful. If teachers concur with and support students’ goals, it can improve student motivation, as students can see how their own personal goals dovetail with course goals. Goal identification also provides students with a framework against which to measure progress, giving them guidance on how to get back on track if they have strayed. Moreover, working with students on their goals allows us to help them develop appropriate and learning oriented, rather than performance, goals. Thus goal identification is an important part of learning how to learn, which can benefit students beyond the boundaries of a specific course." — Learning Assessment Techniques, Barkley, EF and Major, CH, 2016.