A number of students constantly missed class, so I tried to give mini-lectures after a while. But instead of covering what Ribet had just talked about, I would only talk about stuff that was coming soon. People liked that a lot. I felt a bit guilty about it.
On the other hand, after a particularly interesting problem in section, I would make a point of calling everyone’s attention to a common discussion. Sometimes I’d do a mini-lecture (5-10 minutes) if a lot of people had problems. But whenever possible, I preferred to have students do the presenting of their blackboard work to the other students. Particularly if they’d done it in an interesting way, or made an interesting mistake.
– Eric Hsu 1999-01-20