Check out our latest article in University Affairs Magazine, featuring the McCall MacBain Postdoctoral Fellows Teaching and Leadership Program.

We need to teach postdocs how to teach

Check out our first OpEd publication of the term. Congratulations to Dr. Harmanpreet Sidhu for this informative read in the Hamiton Spectator.

Look Carefully: are food and personal care products exactly as advertised?

Dr. Leanne Grieves and Dr. James McKendry, '21 McCall MacBain Fellows, have published a paper from their education research project with Engineering Professor Dr. Seshasai Srinivasan. 

Grieves, L. A., McKendry, J., Muhammad, N., & Srinivasan, S. (2022). The Transition from In-class to Online Lectures During a Pandemic: Understanding the Student Experience. International Journal of Engineering Education, 38(2), 376–392.

The Transition from In-class to Online Lectures During a Pandemic: Understanding the Student Experience

376–392 Leanne A. Grieves, James Mckendry, Nasim Muhammad and Seshasai Srinivasan

In light of Covid-19, McMaster University abruptly transitioned all classes to an online format in Winter 2020, with online classes continuing through the Winter 2021 term. To improve our existing technological framework for the delivery of online courses, we surveyed undergraduate students in McMaster University’s engineering program to assess their online learning preferences and their experience of the transition from in-class to strictly online learning. We identified student preferences for educational video type, number, duration and identified barriers to an online learning environment. In addition to outlining the students’ perspective, we present our findings in the context of the students’ learning by contrasting student learning in the online environment with the learning of earlier cohorts in the in-person environment (i.e., before the pandemic). We assess learning via student performance in exams and assignments for each course. After considering the student’s perspective and learning outcomes, we provide recommendations for an optimal content delivery methodology in an online learning environment.

Keywords: active learning; constructivist theory of learning; Covid-19; education; online learning

Birds sniff out potential mates who are genetically different

Leanne Grieves, McMaster University

I’ll never forget the heady scent of Cindy, my first major crush. Sometimes, I catch a whiff of her Hawaiian Ginger Body Mist perfume and I’m transported 15 years back in time and straight into a darkened club. Calgon, take me away.

Many of us have experienced the power of a nostalgic scent triggering our memories. Of course, our sense of smell doesn’t only serve to remind us of our long-lost loves. Smell can inform us of the presence of enticing food nearby, or it can warn us of dangerous toxins in the environment. We can even smell when our companions are ill.

Our body odour is affected by many factors. The food we eat, our stress levels, if we are healthy or sick, the bacteria and fungi that naturally live on our bodies and even our genetic makeup can all affect the way we smell.

Avian body scent

But what does this have to do with birds?

Much like the phrase “blind as a bat” (bats can see quite well, thank you), there is a persistent myth that birds can’t smell. In the 1820s, artist and ornithologist John James Audubon wrongly claimed that vultures use sight over smell to find food. Audubon’s conclusions were flawed, but the myth lingers on.

Researchers have shown that birds use smell to do all sorts of things, like find food, avoid predators, protect their nests, distinguish relatives from nonrelatives and identify their parents.

Our feathered friends have a special preen gland at the base of their tail. When birds rub the gland with their beak, it releases preen oil, which they groom themselves with. Preen oil helps waterproof and protect feathers from damage, but it is also a major source of bird body odour.

Does a bird’s body odour have a purpose? I wanted to know whether birds feel attracted to each other because of how they smell, like I did with Cindy’s perfume.

By gently squeezing the preen gland, I collected preen oil from a common North American bird called the song sparrow (Melospiza melodia melodia), brought them in to captivity, and gave them a choice between preen oil from males and females. Males spent more time with preen oil from females, and females spent more time with preen oil from males, suggesting that birds prefer the smell of the opposite sex. This is probably because the sparrows were looking for mates to start a family with.

Smell the difference

Birds, like humans, are more likely to raise a healthy family if their mate is genetically unrelated to them. But how can we assess whether a potential partner is a good genetic match?

Our B.O. may hold the key.

Believe it or not, in the 1990s, researchers convinced a group of women to rate their preferences for the smell of men’s dirty shirts. This “sweaty t-shirt experiment” showed that women prefer the B.O. of men who are genetically different from themselves.

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Read more: The smelly truth about romantic relationships and health

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More recently, researchers showed that there is a link between bird scent and bird genes, suggesting that genetically dissimilar birds smell different than genetically similar birds.

I wanted to know whether birds, like humans, prefer the odour of genetically dissimilar partners, so I designed my own sweaty t-shirt experiment. I gave female song sparrows a choice between preen oil from males who were more or less genetically similar to themselves. Just like in the human study, female birds preferred the smell of genetically dissimilar males.

What’s more, I gave male birds the same test and got the same result: males preferred the smell of genetically dissimilar females.

Birds and humans both prefer the scent of a genetically different partner. This can help us ensure our offspring are healthy and able to fight off harmful pathogens.

Leanne Grieves, McCall MacBain Postdoctoral Fellow, Dept. of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.