1. Writing Terminal Objectives

2. What is a terminal objective?
Terminal objectives are what you want your audience to be able to do at the end of your practicum project.
Terminal objectives are most often written in the following format:
By the end of the presentation, the learner or audience will be able to:
State three of the most commons reasons for falls in the home setting.
Discuss four ways falls can be prevented in the home setting.
Explain the different types of clients that are at a higher risk for falls.

3. Connection Among Goals, Terminal Objectives, and Evaluation
The practicum project goal is the broad statement of what you want to achieve as the result of your practicum project. Terminal objectives are what your audience must achieve to reach the overall goal(s) for your practicum project. Your evaluation methodology helps you to determine if your objectives were reached. :
Practicum Project Goal
Practicum Project
Enabling Objectives for Project Completion
Terminal Objectives for Your Audience
Evaluation
Success of Project

4. SMART Terminal Objectives
Specific
Measurable
Time bound
Achievable
Relevant
You need to ask these five questions about any terminal objective that you develop:
Is it specific?
Is it measurable?
Is it a reasonable objective that I can achieve?
Is it relevant to agency needs?
Is it something that can be measured during the time allotted for my practicum project?
MacLeod, L. (2012). Making SMART goals smarter. Physician Executive, 38(2),

5. Terminal Objectives Need to Be Specific
Terminal objectives need to be specific and state exactly what the audience to be able to do as a result of your practicum project.
Terminal objectives need to begin with a cognitive level Bloom’s Taxonomy verb.
Example of a vague terminal objective:
Understand the reason for falls in the home. (You cannot directly measure a person’s
understanding.)
Example of a specific terminal objective:
Name three reasons for falls in the home. (This objective is very specific and success depends on the audience verbalizing three reasons for falls. Specific terminal objectives make evaluation easy.)

6. Terminal Objectives Need to Be Measurable
To evaluate your practicum project and determine if the project is successful, your terminal objectives need to be measurable. If your terminal objectives are not measurable, it will be difficult for you to determine if your project is successful. This terminal objective is not measurable: Name some reasons for falls in the hospital setting. The word some makes the terminal objective vague and difficult to measure. A measurable terminal objective is: Name four reasons for falls in the hospital setting.

7. Terminal Objectives Need to Be Achievable
Some terminal objectives are not realistic or achievable in the limited amount of time you have to complete your practicum project. You should develop terminal objectives that you can accomplish by the end of your MSN program.
The following terminal objectives are unrealistic:
Revise the entire educational curriculum of an LPN to BSN program.
Develop a generic RN to BSN program.
Develop an orientation manual and train 500 nursing staff in the next six months to use the new manual.

8. Terminal Objectives Need to Be Relevant
When developing your terminal objectives, your topic and project need to be relevant to the needs of the agency where you are completing your practicum project.
Relevance is directly tied to the data you obtained in your needs assessment.
Ask yourself, “Is my practicum project needed by the agency?”
Examples of non-relevant objectives and projects:
Developing terminal objectives for a new practicum project on UTIs when all staff have recently been trained on this topic.
Developing objectives for an Alzheimer’s educational project with a teenage audience.

9. Terminal Objectives Need to be Time Bound
For the purposes of this practicum project, your terminal objectives also need to be time bound and consist of something you can accomplish in a finite period of time. Example: Evaluate the effectiveness of the fall educational presentation 1 year later. While the above objective may be useful in determining if your educational presentation had a lasting influence on your audience, it is not realistic given the time constraints of this practicum project.