Teaching markets and institutions is really teaching about the Financial System. I stress this repeatedly throughout the year. There is a real danger of the class becoimg too much like Money and banking. One way to leson this danger is to leave much of the inner workings of the Federal Reserve System to Money and Banking and cover more of the Investment Banking, regulatory, derivatives, and financial innovation in this class. As markets and institutions are constantly changing, current events are more important in this class than others.
Students love institutional details and trivia.
Additionally market microstucture is not only a newer topic, but one that helps students understand the inner workings of financial markets. For this reason case classes are generally reserved as the final or capstone course. There are innumberable ways to conduct a case class. In my case classes, we have two groups presenting by playing out the roles of management and consultants, the other groups are responsible for a one page memo. The goal of a case class should be to help students integrate information from a number of classes as well as to gain public speaking experience and prepare for the post graduate Finance world.