Small Project Based Learning in a course of financial mathematics. A case study

The teaching of financial mathematics requires the proper selection of tasks that illustrate and supplement theoretical issues. One cannot miss out tasks arising from the practice of the operations on the financial markets. The students may choose such problems themselves and realize them in project mode with one or two partners as a team. The article shows the method of small projects that differs from the classic project based learning, known from the literature, by the scale of the project. The small project method allows one to use it as part of the coursework in financial mathematics, while the general project based learning cannot be applied due to the short time of the course. The article compares the classical project based learning with the proposed method of small projects and shows its implementation in teaching financial mathematics at University of Warsaw.