In Spring 2026, I taught MATH 4573 at Ohio State, which was elementary number theory. This was my second time teaching the course. Here are some of my reflections on this class.

- The only prerequisite for this course is Ohio State's MATH 3345, which is Foundations of Higher Mathematics. 

- I had 14 students enrolled in my class, with at least half of the students graduating that semester. More than half of them were also CSE majors.

- This time, I removed lectures on arithmetic functions, and included more lectures on elliptic curves. At the end of the semester, I surveyed the class, and asked them about their favorite topic that they learned. An overwhelming majority said elliptic curves!

- Covering basic abstract algebra went much better this time. I spent more time on it, and structured its review differently. I am now confident that beginning abstract algebra can be taught in a meaningful way to students who have recently finished an introduction to proofs course.

- When I last taught this class, I had students write a project on a topic of their choice in number theory. This time, I had them present on a topic. We dedicated a week of class time to class presentations (with an additional 1.5-hour block outside of class). The students seemed to have much more fun with presentations.

-Most of my assignment grading was done through Gradescope. This includes the homework assignments, the midterm and the final exam, which have rubrics on Gradescope for students to view after they have been graded.

-I had a grader for this course who helped with grading the homework. I provided him with a solutions guide each week, in addition to the Gradescope rubric.