None of 25 students at question session before exam has a question. What should lecturer do? In a comment on another question Josef shared an anecdote.


  And just another anecdote: A few weeks ago, there was a question hour at the last lecture timeslot before the exam. About ~25 of more than 120 people taking the course where there. Nobody actually had a question. All just wanted to hear the other questions...


I have seen this many times. Sometimes the lecturer can push students and someone will ask "what will be in the exam?" which is obviously useless and just makes the lecturer restate what (usually) is already told multiple times about content and procedure of the exam.

What should the lecturer do in such a case?

Technically it seems correct to just say "if you have no more questions, the session is over" and go home.

Yet there are times when the lecturer had to commute to this specific lecture and it seems travel-time spent in vain if nothing is actually done.

Students have also come in hopes that the session will help them prepare for exam. And usually the average question-session student is above the average from all the courses students, and lecturers don't like to let down the more interested and responsible students who assumed they don't want to miss this event. And usually this is what happens - the lecturer tries to improvise and talk on some subjects that seems more tricky/useful for the lecturer.

What are the best strategies so the lecturer could actually make the "question" session worth the attendees time?

I know it isn't good to broaden the question intentionally, but solid plans how to prepare and avoid the no-question situation at all are also welcome here.
Some specific suggestions:


You likely know what material the students have been having issues with, based on questions from lecture, office hours, previous homework sets, or whatever. Mention those topics and review them.
Instead of asking for broad-based questions, go over the syllabus lecture by lecture, calling out specific topics by name and asking whether there was any issues with each of those. It'll help prime their memory.
Ask the TAs to attend. If that's not possible, ask them to send you common questions ahead of time. They also know what the students are finding difficult.