Introduction. The need to prepare master’s degree students with the specialty «Land management and national inventories» for project-oriented professional activities, the increase of the land management role in establishing the steady development of nature and society and global IT development have updated the search for methods of teaching students how to operate land management projects using information technology tools.

Materials and methods. The research is based on four approaches, i.e. systematic, technological, activity-based and competency-based. During the working process the following methods were used: analysis, comparison, modeling and concretization.

Results. The paper presents the specifics of land management projects in terms of their structure, content, and methods of implementation. The land management project development is defined as a methodology for the land-use system, including establishing a policy on rational resource allocation, considering specific restrictions for a particular land management project and elaborating land-use transformations. The training potential of MS Excel in project management is substantiated. The method of teaching project management to master’s degree students by constructing a Gantt chart is demonstrated. The positive results concerning the usage of electronic spreadsheets in teaching the master’s degree students with the specialty «Land management and national inventories» how to operate land management projects are described. The research is based on the ideas of systematic, technological and activity-based approaches.

Discussion. The hypothesis for the efficiency and effectiveness of the usage of MS Excel spreadsheets in teaching master’s degree students in land management and national inventory the control of land management projects is confirmed by the results of the experiment. The authors described an increase in the average score of students’ progress in the course of study «Project Management» during the assessment of the students’ grasping of the basis of land planning both in reference and experimental groups. The method of teaching project management based on the construction of the Gantt chart using MS Excel spreadsheets was tested in the experimental group

Conclusion. The results of the work, presented in the paper, can be used by specialists engaged in the development of educational and methodological support for educational programs of a master’s degree in various fields of students’ training in project management.

• The authors validate the increasing attention in the higher education to preparing master’s degree students for project activity.
• The authors offer a method of teaching land management projects based on the usage of information technologies.
• The authors demonstrate teaching students how to use the Gantt chart while visualizing the stages of the land management project implementation.
• The authors draw a conclusion about the effectiveness of using this technique as proved by an increase in the average score of mastering the discipline “Project Management” in the experimental group.

1. Erb K.H. (2017) Land management: data availability and process understanding for global change studies. Global change biology. Vol. 23, 2, 512–533.
2. Nabielek P., Dumke H. & Weninger K. (2018) Balanced renewable energy scenarios: a method for making spatial decisions despite insufficient data, illustrated by a case study of the Vorderland-Feldkirch Region, Vorarlberg, Austria. Energy. Sustainability and Society. Vol. 8(1).
3. Krievina A., Pilvere I., Nipers A. (2015) Agricultural land use management aspects in the Baltic Sea region countries. International Multidisciplinary Scientific GeoConference Surveying Geology and Mining Ecology Management. 19–27.
4. Avrunev E.I., Zharnikov V.B., Klyushnichenko V.N., Nikolaev N.A. (2012) K istorii stanovleniya i razvitiya podgotovki spetsialistov v oblasti zemleustroystva i kadastrov v SGGA [To the history of formation and development of specialists’ training in the field of land management and inventories in the Siberian state university of geosystems and technologies] The Messenger of the Siberian state university of geosystems and technologies. 4 (20), 141–146. (In Russian).
5. Aliev T.A, Zasyad’-volk V.V., Zabolotskaya T.A. (2013) Problemy stanovleniya i perspektivy razvitiya napravleniya «Zemleustroystvo i kadastry» na fakul’tete geografii i geojekologii SpbGU [Problems of formation and the prospect of development of the Land Management and Inventories direction at faculty of geography and geoecology of St.Petersburg State University] Vestnik SpbGU. Sciences about Earth. 4, 168–174. (In Russian).
6. Volkov S., Fomin A. (2014) Istoriya zemleustroitelnogo obrazovaniya v Rossii [The history of land management education in Russia] The International agricultural magazine. 5, 31–35. (In Russian).
7. Gulyas D.I. (2012) Podgotovka spetsialistov v ramkakh napravleniya «Zemleustroystvo i kadastry» vchera i segodnya [Specialists’ training at the Land Management and Inventories speciality yesterday and today] The Bulletin of the Omsk state agricultural university. 2 (6), 17–20. (In Russian).
8. Murasheva A.A, Chepurin E.M, Kamynina N.R. (2014) Problemy razrabotki kvalifikatsionnykh ramok i otsenki kvalifikatsii v oblasti zemleustroystva [Problems of developing the qualification frameworks and assessment of qualifications in the field of land management] Education and Science. 6 (115), 45–56. (In Russian).
9. Rudoj E.V. (2018) Razvitie otechestvennogo otraslevogo obrazovaniya v agrarnoy sfere: retrospektiva, sovremennoe sostoyanie, kljuchevye problemy [Development of the national branch education in the agricultural sphere: its retrospective, current state and key problems] Professional education in the modern world. Vol. 7, 4, 1388–1400. (In Russian).
10. Gorokhova E.A. (2009) Osobennosti zemleustroitel’nogo proektirovaniya v sovremennykh usloviyakh [The features of land management design in modern conditions] The Russian economic online magazine. 2, 254–257. Availiable from: http://www.e-rej.ru/Articles/2009/Gorokhova.pdf [Accessed 20 February 2018]. (In Russian).
11. Pavlova V.A, Uvarova E.L. (2017) Novejshie tekhnologii v kadastrovoy deyatel’nosti [The newest technologies in cadastral activities] Zapiski Gornogo Instituta. 2, 313–319. DOI: 10.18454/PMI.2017.3.313 (In Russian).
12. Verburg P.H. et al. (2015) Land system science and sustainable development of the earth system: A global land project perspective. Anthropocene. Vol. 12, 29–41.
13. Jepsen M.R. et al. (2015) Transitions in European land-management regimes between 1800 and 2010. Land Use Policy. Vol. 49, 53–64.
14. Keesstra S. et al. (2018) The superior effect of nature based solutions in land management for enhancing ecosystem services. Science of the Total Environment. Vol. 610, 997–1009.
15. Mann C., Schдfer M. (2018) Developing sustainable water and land management options: reflections on a transdisciplinary research process. Sustainability Science. Vol. 13. 1, 205–217.
16. Liu C., Yu Z. (2017) Analysis and Research on Industrial Land Transfer in Hefei City Economic and Technological Development Zone of Anhui Province. Asian Agricultural Research. Vol. 9. 3, 40.
17. Meena V.S., Mondal T., Pandey B.M., Mukherjee A., Yadav R.P., Choudhary M., Singh S., Bisht J.K. and Pattanayak A. (2018) Land use changes: Strategies to improve soil carbon and nitrogen storage pattern in the mid-Himalaya ecosystem, India. Geoderma. Vol. 321, 69–78.
18. Gasanbekov S.K., Lubenets N.A. (2014) Setevoe planirovanie kak instrument upravleniya projektami [Network planning as an instrument of project management] Izvestiya MGTU. 1, 21–25. (in Russian).
19. Liang L., Lal R., Ridoutt B.G., Du Z., Wang D., Wang L., Wu W. and Zhao G. (2018) Life Cycle Assessment of China’s agroecosystems. Ecological Indicators. Vol. 88, 341–350.
20. Sharon A., Dori D. (2017) Model-Based Project-Product Lifecycle Management and Gantt Chart Models: A Comparative Study. Systems Engineering. Vol. 20, 5, 447–466.