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 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 2017, Sarah Sharma, an Associate Professor of Media Theory, began a five-year term as director of the Centre (2017- ).
[3] 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.