Practical Aspects of Project Based Interdisciplinary Teaching with GIS

2009 the state of teaching and research is in a condition that can hardly be considered to be optimistic. It can be characterised with the constantly decreasing number of students, lack of qualified experts in many fields, old and frequently irrelevant methodologies in research, poor or no public image of geography in the country. On the other hand there are an increasing number of research and development projects in the country. The project based approach has been, as elsewhere a fact during the past decades, however a particularly important specific of the country is the increase of funding for research with budgets and priority areas, where projects exist have increased in times since 2007. This creates excellent opportunities for inclusion of students as participants in the research projects where they can get involved with practical applications of the knowledge that they gain during their studies in geography. This is also achieved thanks to the use of GIS in fields where geographic research is underrepresented like biology, archaeology, marketing and management, regional and urban development, etc. The paper addresses the issues of PBL with GIS through the inclusion of students in project activities with the benefits as well as the problems that occurred during this process. The problem of integration of the abovementioned PBL approach within the curriculum is also addressed in the paper