Richard E. Mayer, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) where he has served since 1975. Richard E. Mayer, Ph.D., is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) where he has served since 1975. Dr. Mayer’s research concerns cognition, instruction, and technology, including multimedia learning environments. He is interested in how to present information in ways that help people understand, such as determining how illustrations affect how people learn from scientific text, how people learn scientific explanations from computer-based animation and narration, and how people learn to solve problems from computer games, simulations, and virtual reality. Dr. Mayer is past-President of the Division of Educational Psychology of the American Psychological Association, former editor of the Educational Psychologist and former co-editor of Instructional Science, former Chair of the UCSB Department of Psychology, and the year 2000 recipient of the E. L. Thorndike Award for career achievement in educational psychology. He is on the editorial boards of 10 journals mainly in educational psychology. He is the author of 18 books and more than 250 articles and chapters, including Learning and Instruction (2003), Multimedia Learninge-Learning and the Science of Instruction (2003), with Ruth Clark.
