Niels Ebbe Dam teaches Electrophysics and Materials on the BEng study programme, and he is so good at it that he was named ‘2016 Lecturer of the Year’. There are plenty of good reasons for this. For example, he uses mothers-in-law in his teaching.
The desks stand higgeldy-piggeldy, there are papers all over the floor, and the distinctive sound of a can of Red Bull being opened mixes with the chatter between the rows. It is Tuesday morning at DTU Ballerup Campus, which means question time on the Electrophysics and Materials course. Niels-Ebbe Dam steps into the room and the chatter dies away when he taps his desk three times with his pointer. All eyes turn to him.
We are evidently in the presence of a respected lecturer. A lecturer who has devoted a total of eleven and a half years to taking an MSc in chemistry, immediately followed by one in electrophysics—simply because he was highly interested in both. A lecturer who is passionate about his subject area, and about passing on his knowledge.
A lecturer who expects effort from the students who take the course. They have to put away their computers and complete 24 written tests in 13 weeks, as well as a series of written assignments and an oral exam. They have to be able to reel off 150 formulae, explain 300 figures, and spend more time than is officially allotted to the course to make the grade. But Niels-Ebbe gives at least as much in return.
Watch the video of Niels-Ebbe Dam in action...(English subtitles)
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His private phone number is general knowledge among the class, and all the students know they are welcome to text him if they encounter an academic problem. He does not want anyone to become disheartened through searching in vain for an answer. They text him and he calls them back. Sometimes as often as ten times a day.
“I’ve told them to contact me without delay so that we can sort the problem out immediately and they can carry on,” he says. No matter that it may be a Friday evening.
For almost a decade, he has worked up to 70 hours a week to find time to develop his own teaching material for the course. The American textbooks that dominate the area are simply not good enough in his opinion. The material his students receive must be at ‘the highest level you can reach.’ So Niels-Ebbe has written it himself.
He believes that if he is passionate about the course, his students will be, too.
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Quotes from Niels-Ebbe Dam's BEng students:
“He does everything for his students and works like a horse.”
“He’s amazing at making complicated things easy to understand.”
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The green pen
Niels-Ebbe Dam actually found it rather inconvenient that he had to start teaching back in the late 1980s. It was a ‘necessary evil’ in the PhD programme, which deprived him of time he would rather be devoting to his research.
“A colleague told me that all I had to do was buy a red pen and shout at the students. They would then lose interest in handing in their assignments, and I’d have fewer of them to correct,” he relates. “But then I thought that if I had to give classes, I might as well try to teach them something.”
So instead, Niels-Ebbe bought himself a green pen and used it to highlight all the places in the assignments where the students had got something right. As a result, more of them handed in assignments—‘unfortunately’ for Niels-Ebbe—but they became cleverer and cleverer, which felt good. A true lecturer was born. In 2007, he joined the staff of DTU Diplom and started teaching full time. And now he loves it.
Understanding is the key
“I enjoy explaining things, even the most difficult things ... finding ways to communicate them so that the students understand them,” he says. And he always makes sure that everyone is up to speed.
“Whenever I give a lecture, I make sure to look at the students. I have to be able to read their faces. If I can see that their attention is starting to wander, that means they haven’t completely understood what I’m trying to convey. So we go over it one more time,” he explains.
"You get the impression that nothing in the world is as important to him as making sure his students build up an in-depth understanding of electrophysics."
BEng student
It is important to him that the students taking his course do not simply memorize the material without questioning it, or monotonously repeat chunks of text. In his opinion, learning things off by heart belongs to the time when every day started with communal hymn-singing. Students should understand the material
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“If you have simply learned a formula off by heart, you probably don’t know how it was originally developed,” he says. “But if you can go from square one to the mathematical proof, you can follow the logic every step of the way. And then you don’t need to memorize all the intermediate steps, because they come to you naturally.
“It should ideally become part of your DNA, because then you can play around with it,” concludes Niels-Ebbe.
Mother-in-law and blue wires
So how do you make electrophysics ‘part of your DNA’?
With images, according to Niels-Ebbe. For example, he always uses the concept of a mother-in-law when explaining negative charges, which are always written in blue in the teaching material. Every time students come across a blue wire, they instantly think of a mother-in-law so they know they are dealing with a negative charge, he explains.
Of course, he has not deliberately set out to offend anyone, but as he relates:
“Irrespective of whether you are from Iran or Iraq or any country in Europe, you know what a mother-in-law is.”
It is important for Niels-Ebbe to get his students laughing. As he sees it, it has to do with distracting their attention from the fact that the subject matter is remarkably dull.
And it seems that he has succeeded on this Tuesday morning, where all eyes are focused unswervingly on Niels-Ebbe Dam. It may be the toughest course in electrophysics you can take in Denmark, but the students love it, he says, and the grade point average is much higher than you would expect from such complex material. If you ask Niels-Ebbe whether this might be down to his teaching, he smiles modestly and quickly makes the point that his students tend to be a bit ‘geeky’—just like him.
“We’re on the same wavelength.”
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Niels-Ebbe is the author of a large body of teaching materials, illustrated with drawings that each take up to 8 hours to make. He rarely sleeps more than 4-5 hours each night, because he simply can't put his work down..
He is
- one of two winners of Lecturer of the Year 2016;
- responsible for seven courses at DTU
- has been lecturing at DTU since 2007;
- has two degrees from DTU: MSc in Electrical Engineering and MSc in Chemistry.
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