A Western University science professor has gone viral, with millions of views across Tik Tok and Instagram.
In the video, Prof. Derek Mclaughlin, is heard singing along to the “Shape of You” by Ed Sheeran.
Except the lyrics are different, Mclaughlin changed the lyrics of the song to lyrics that relate to whatever he was teaching in his lecture at the time.
“This particular song had a line about I’m in love with your body, and I have a lecture about Ketone bodies and I thought that worked well so then I just created the song from there,” says Mclaughlin.
Mclaughlin does all this in hopes of keeping his students engaged.
“Oh well, in the moment I think students appreciate it, I mean the bar is pretty low, they appreciate anything we do to try to keep things interesting. So yeah I get a lot of good feedback that way,” says Mclaughlin.
Prof. Mclaughlin has no prior musical experience other than “taking piano lessons as a kid,” but luckily singing is not his only way of keeping students engaged.
Prof. Mclaughlin teaching (source/Joshua Chen XFM)
“It kind of fit with his learning methods, usually at the start of class he has a little comic book that he relates to the lecture content and has a story about a student that is going through a bunch of stages in life… it really gets us more engaged,” says Navya Arora, a student of Prof. Mclaughlin.
This isn’t the first time Mclaughlin has remixed a song, other videos have seen and heard him sing covers like “APT” by Rose or “You Belong With Me” by Taylor Swift.
“Yeah I have a few songs actually in the repertoire that I do, I sing about average 3-4 times a term.”
His attempts to keep students engaged does not go unnoticed, as many of his students appreciate the different methods he tries. Maybe one day we’ll see Prof. Derek Mclaughlin on the big stages as he continues to find new ways to help students learn.
