Teaching spreadsheet-based decision support systems with Visual Basic for applications

Office 2000 has become a standard desktop application package for employees of virtually all Fortune 500 organizations and most small and home offices. The spreadsheet component of Office 2000, Excel, is widely used throughout the business world today for processing quantitative data and developing analytical solutions. The ability to build decision support systems (DSS) based on these spreadsheet solutions can facilitate knowledge management and increase information utilization within an organization. This paper describes experiences in preparing for and teaching a new course offering for undergraduate information systems majors in developing DSS with Visual Basic for Applications, the programming language for Excel. As a result, the paper hopes to encourage other educators to explore this new technology as a worthwhile addition to information systems curricula.