McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology

The McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology started in 1963 as the Centre for Culture and Technology, initially a card pinned to the door of Marshall McLuhan's office in the English department at the University of Toronto. In 1965, McLuhan draft Constitution for the center read: "The Centre is established to advance the understanding of the origins and effects of technology" to "investigation into the psychic and social consequences of technologies."[1]

History

Initially the centre had no organized program for research or teaching, but gained in prestige from the worldwide popularity of Understanding Media (1964) and grew in McLuhan's last decade in Toronto, assisted by Derrick de Kerckhove and McLuhan's son Eric, who became a director of the McLuhan Program International.[2]

In 1994, the McLuhan Program became a part of the University of Toronto's Faculty of Information. The program's curriculum is based on the works of Marshall McLuhan and other media theorists. The first director was literacy scholar and OISE Professor David R. Olsen. From 1983 until 2008, the McLuhan Program was under the direction of Derrick de Kerckhove who was McLuhan's student and translator. From 2008 through 2015 Professor Dominique Scheffel-Dunand of York University served as Director of the Program. In 2009, the faculty of information launched the Coach House Institute (CHI) as a clearly defined research unit under which the McLuhan Program in Culture and Technology now operates.

In 2011, at the time of his centenary, the Centre established a Marshall McLuhan Centenary Fellowship program in his honour, and each year appoints up to four fellows for a maximum of two years. In 2016 under the interim director, Seamus Ross (2015-2016), the institute receive approval for its renaming as the McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology in recognition of McLuhan's intellectual contributions. The McLuhan Program is now subsumed under this centre. In 2017, Sarah Sharma, an Associate Professor of Media Theory, began a five-year term as director of the Centre (2017- ).[3]

Media experiments

Between the 1950s and the early 1960s, the center conducted an experiment that compared the effectiveness of TV, radio, lectures and print in learning.[4][5] The results were that the students retained more information from radio and television than they did from live lectures or printed material.[4] The experiment was replicated by Roach, Aman, Appleton, Bellyea and Lips. And then by Williams, Paul and Ogilvie.[5]

References
  1. Marshall McLuhan (Draft Constitution, 1965) https://www.mcluhancentre.ca/
  2. "About Eric McLuhan".
  3. "Prof. Sarah Sharma Appointed Director of McLuhan Centre". McLuhan Centre for Culture and Technology. Toronto: University of Toronto. December 13, 2016. Archived from the original on November 14, 2017. Retrieved November 14, 2017.
  4. McLuhan (1964) Understanding Media, ch.31 Television
  5. Siegel, Howard B. McLuhan, Mass Media, and Education, in The journal of experimental education. 1973, Vol.41(3), p.68-70
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