Effectiveness of Short Duration Training Programmes on Field Level Watershed Functionaries

The present investigation was conducted to study the effectiveness of the short duration training programmes organised for field level watershed functionaries. Ten training programmes of four days duration on Soil and Water Conservation were organized in different parts of the country by the School of Agriculture, IGNOU with the financial support of the Department of Land Resources, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India. A total of 325 participants attended the training programmes. The effectiveness of the training programmes was assessed by evaluating the knowledge gained by the participants after completion of the programme by conducting pre- and post-test of the candidates. The results revealed that the average score of the participants in the post-test (15.4) was comparatively higher than the pre-test score (8.7) which indicated that the awareness programme had significant impact on the knowledge of the participants. Further, the improvement in knowledge on an average of the participants was 82.99% which indirectly indicates the effectiveness of the training programme. The feedback from the participants revealed that they had gained a lot of knowledge in the new technologies and recent trends in watershed management and soil & water conservation. They have also suggested that more such training programmes needs to be conducted on regular basis.