Needs Assessment and Prioritization Performance of Natural Resources Training Courses by using Combination Method SWOT-AHP (Case Study: Lorestan Province)

In educational programs that are implemented at the level of watersheds or customary systems to advance the goals of the Forests and Rangelands Organization, generally prioritizing the type of training course and analyzing the preference of using methods to convey educational concepts to target groups has received less attention. The effectiveness of any training course requires aligning the training with the needs of the target community; therefore, before implementing any training program, it is necessary to identify the training needs through a specific structure and to train them based on priority by the most effective method. The purpose of this study is to define a systematic structure for assessing the needs of natural resource training courses, prioritizing them based on expert opinion, and finally determining the appropriate method for implementing the selected courses.

For this study, the customary arrangement of Cham Palk located in Lorestan province has been considered. In the process of determining educational needs, the decision support method was used with SWOT-AHP combined models. From the training courses defined by the Forests and Rangelands Organization of the country, appropriate courses were selected based on the results of the SWOT model and local information resources (investigation of customary system violations) by a group of training experts. In the next step, the selected courses were prioritized based on the ranking method.

The results of this study showed that for the customary organization of Cham Palk, the implementation of training courses on the basics of entrepreneurship in natural resources (relative weight 8.9), the role of livelihood change in natural resources management (relative weight 8.3), grazing management with the participation of local communities (relative weight 7.9) had the first three priorities. Descriptive analysis of the preferred use of educational tools using the Likert scale also showed that in general, radio, television, and Internet are the most preferred educational tools for this customary system.

In this study, decision support tools were used to create a structure in proposing the implementation of training courses for local communities, which can be considered as a model in the implementation policies of training courses.