Abstract
This paper discusses the potential for and issues in returning geographic knowledge to university education in the research area based on the author's experience in Lao PDR. Social changes in the country such as drastic reform of land use planning and the growth of tourism resulted in a greater need for GIS and regional geography education in the National University of Laos (NUOL). We gave GIS and GPS seminar to senior faculty of the NUOL, where we placed more value on the process of mapping than on the operation of devices and explained how we utilized GIS and GPS in our fieldwork in Lao PDR. We should try to create geographic knowledge jointly among visiting researchers and local researchers, for example, through discussion of Japanese rural problems in Lao regional geography education.
