Formulating Terminal Objectives: BA Business Management (Leadership)

This essay provides an analysis and formulation of terminal objectives for a Bachelor of Arts in Business Management, specifically majoring in Leadership Practices, a course offered by The Open University. The course, which takes 3-6 years to complete, aims to equip students with essential management and leadership skills. The objectives are structured based on Bloom’s taxonomy, covering cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. The essay details terminal course objectives using the ABCD model, including students' ability to express leadership skills, demonstrate understanding of leadership management, apply ethics, integrate management and leadership skills, and communicate effectively. Enabling objectives are also provided to support the achievement of the terminal goals, particularly focusing on differentiating between management and leadership. The essay emphasizes the importance of using measurable verbs and varying levels to ensure students acquire a diverse range of skills.

Running head: EDUCATIONAL DESIGNLEARNING 1
Educational Design Learning
Student name
Institution
Date

EDUCATIONAL DESIGN LEARNING 2
BA (Honors) in Business Management (Leadership Practices)
Abstract
The paper covers the analysis and formulation of terminal objectives for a Bachelor of Arts
Business Management majoring in Leadership Practices. The course takes 3-6 years to
complete depending on student availability (whether part or full time). Successful completion
of the course is expected to equip students with management and leadership skills. The
objectives are based on Bloom’s taxonomy and levels and cover cognitive, affective and
psychomotor domains.
Course Brief Summary
This course is offered by The Open University and leads to an award of a degree in
leadership practices after successful completion of three years for regular students and six
years for part-time students. Notably, one requires at least 18 hours per week to complete all
the three stages of the course consisting of 120 credits (The Open University, n.d.). Ideally,
the course aims at equipping students with cognitive, practical and professional skills in
leadership as well as change management in an organization. The contents of the course
cover both business management, organization of people, marketing and finance and strategic
leadership. After successful completion of the course, a student is graded to either a Firs,
Second-upper, Second-lower or third class honors. The grading largely depends on the grades
obtained on the last two stages consisting of 240 credits.
Terminal Course Objectives
Based on the ABCD model (Audience, Behaviour, Condition, Degree), the following
are possible terminal objectives of the course.
1. Students will be able to express their practical skills in leadership practices by the end of
the three to six-year learning journey. (Comprehension Level)

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2. All learners will be able to demonstrate an extensive and deep understanding of
leadership management skills in at least 95% of their works. (Application Level)
3. The BA (Honors) students will be able to manage, use and apply ethics, morals, and
values relating to leadership dilemmas in most of their activities. (Synthesis Level)
4. Towards completion of the course, students will have adequate knowledge to integrate
management and leadership skills in their work. (Creation Level)
5. After the course, the BA Honors student will be able to communicate effectively using
both verbal, electronic tools, listening and non-verbal skills to develop relationships and
work across differences. (Adaptation Level)
Enabling Objective
The following are enabling objectives for the terminal objective number four.
1. The learners will be able to distinguish between management and leadership
2. The learners will be able to implement both management and leadership skills
Conclusion
When developing terminal objectives, it is essential to use appropriate measurable
verbs that precisely indicates Bloom’s level (Adams, 2015). Accordingly, the decision to use
verbs such as express, demonstrate, manage and integrate is informed by the desired level of
the terminal objectives. Essentially, the levels were varied to ensure that the students get a
diverse range of skills. For terminal goals to be reached, its simplification is needed, and this
too applies taxonomies that reflect certain levels of cognitive skills (Keene, Colvin &
Sissons, 2010). As a result, I choose to expand objective four since it incorporates two
different perspectives. Based on the enabling objectives, the learners will be able to
comprehend management and leadership skills separately first thus allowing them to integrate
both at the end of the course.

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References
Adams, N. (2015). Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive learning objectives. Journal of the
Medical Library Association: JMLA, 103(3), 152-153. doi: 10.3163/1536-
5050.103.3.010
Keene, J., Colvin, J., & Sissons, J. (2010). Mapping Student Information Literacy Activity
against Bloom’s Taxonomy of Cognitive Skills. Journal of Information Literacy, 4(1), 6-
21. doi: 10.11645/4.1.189
The Open University. Q91-LP - BA (Honours) Business Management (Leadership Practice).
Retrieved from http://www.openuniversity.edu/courses/qualifications/q91-lp