Innovative design for courses with group projects

In this paper, we describe an innovative design for courses with group projects that we have implemented in the graduate Decision Support Systems (DSS) course offered at the Harriman School for Management and Policy, College of Business, at Stony Brook University. Each group is associated with two projects. For one project, the group acts as the client that is interested in purchasing the DSS under development by a second group. For the other project, the group acts as the developer of a DSS that a third group is interested in purchasing. This design enables students to experience the technical and managerial aspects of software development from the perspectives of both the buyer and seller. In addition, the design increases each student's in-depth experience with two projects rather than one, thereby providing the student with a broader understanding of the course material. We perform an assessment of the design and present results from a questionnaire about student perceptions.