Please introduce yourselves. Assign at least one of the questions to each member of your group, who will be responsible for presenting the group's thoughts on that question.
Darwin is a new professor, assigned to teach the sophomore Electricity & Magnetism course for physics majors. He has finished a post-doc at Fermilab, having gotten his PhD at MIT and a BS from Swarthmore. He never taught before: He always had research assistantship or fellowship. At the beginning of the semester, an experienced faculty member gave him a copy of the text and a previously used syllabus. Darwin rewrote the syllabus slightly to emphasize fundamental concepts more and memorization and problem crunching less. The first day of class went fairly well, although the students seemed a bit put off by the amount of work.
Darwin is able to lecture at a reasonably high level. The class does not ask many questions, but those they do ask are good ones. Darwin enjoys his lectures; his grader handles all of the homework efficiently; and Darwin's teaching does not interfere with his research.
Finally, the time has come for the first exam. Darwin had never written an exam before, and so he modeled it on the exams he remembered from his undergraduate days. In fact, he made it a bit easy. Again the grader has done the grading, but now as Darwin looks over the graded exams, he notices something odd: The class average is 27%.
What is wrong about a class average of 27%? Maybe nothing needs fixing.
How did Darwin get in trouble?
If this situation had happened to you, what serious problems would there be for you?
Is the grader at fault? What should Darwin do about his grader?
Now that damage has been done, what should Darwin do?