Abstract:

The courses described in this study are held at the University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn and at the Military University of Technology in Warsaw, both in Poland. The courses programme has been based on 10 years’ experience of the authors' training as well as experience from the scholarship at the Stanford University and implementation of the obtained there knowledge in own courses.

The courses include the conceptual basis of designing, implementation and application of the spatial information system for users representing various disciplines and areas of life. Increasingly, they are the humanists, historians, digital heritage specialists, people from non-technical areas. To meet their expectations, deep cooperation with IT/GIS specialists, is necessary due to the diverse users’ needs. It requires, on both sides, outstanding creativity, the ability to work in a team of people with different skills, really good communication and presentation skills, effective leadership etc.

The aim of paper is to present the concept of the inclusion into the curses programme soft skills development for the purpose of creating non-standard IT/GIS solutions. A selection of techniques for soft skills development adjusted to the course's goals and intended effects is discussed. Furthermore, the proposals of the tasks' scope and integration of different forms of teacher-student and student-student communication, as well as some findings from practice are also described. Selected elements of the design thinking methodology will be also presented.

The aim of the proposed solutions is to enlarge the area of students’ knowledge application by extending the numbers of disciplines which can be supported by spatial information.

Keywords:

GIS, soft skils.