Richard Mayer

University of California, Santa Barbara | UCSB · Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences

Background How to improve learning with online multimedia lessons has attracted widespread concern. Prior studies have attempted to help students learn by breaking a video lesson into several segments. However, there has been a debate about whether learners can use pause time effectively and whether prompting them to engage in different types of ge...

Two experiments examined the effects of a pedagogical agent's (PA's) pointing gestures, eye gaze, and eye contact on learning processes (measured by learners' eye fixations on relevant elements) and learning outcomes (as measured by retention and transfer test scores) with a multimedia lesson on neural transmission. In Experiment 1, having the PA l...

This study describes and investigates the immersion principle in multimedia learning. A sample of 102 middle school students took a virtual field trip to Greenland via a head mounted display (HMD) or a 2D video as an introductory lesson within a 6-lesson inquiry-based climate change intervention. The HMD group scored significantly higher than the v...

Can immersive virtual reality (IVR) serve as an effective venue for learning and training? The promise of learning in IVR lies in its affordances for motivating learners to engage in generative processing (i.e., cognitive processing aimed at making sense of the material). The pitfall of learning in IVR is that it can distract learners so they engag...

Background With the rapid popularization of e‐learning, how to improve online learning has aroused widespread concern. A human‐like pedagogical agent (PA) that displays eye gaze and gestures, is often added to online multimedia lessons to increase social connection and improve learning in e‐learning environments. However, there has been a debate ab...

The present study examines the existing published research about the effectiveness of learner-generated highlighting and instructor-provided highlighting on learning from text. A meta-analysis was conducted of scientifically rigorous experiments comparing the learning outcomes (i.e., performance on memory and/or comprehension tests) of students (i....

This study examined the impacts of adding emotional design features to a multimedia lesson (color alone, anthropomorphism alone, or color & anthropomorphism together) on college students’ affective processes (measured by ratings of experienced emotion during learning), cognitive processes (measured by eye-tracking metrics), and learning outcomes (m...

This study investigates the positivity principle-the idea that people respond more positively and learn better from an instructor who displays positive emotion than from an instructor who displays negative emotion-and the equivalence hypothesis-the idea that learners respond similarly to the emotional tone displayed by both human and virtual instru...

Digital and online learning is more prevalent than ever, making multimedia learning a primary objective for many instructors. The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning examines cutting-edge research to guide creative teaching methods in online classrooms and training. Recognized as the field's major reference work, this research-based handbook...

Social cues can create a sense of partnership between learners and the instructor, which then motivates learners to engage in generative processing. The personalization principle is that people learn better when multimedia lessons are presented in a conversational or polite style, rather than a formal or direct style. The voice principle is that pe...

Generative learning involves actively making sense of the learning material by engaging in activities for organizing the material and integrating it with one’s existing knowledge. This chapter explores activities that support generative learning from multimedia lessons: verbalizing, visualizing, and enacting. Verbalizing activities involve generati...

Multimedia learning is learning from words and pictures. The rationale for studying multimedia learning is that people can learn more deeply from words and pictures than from words alone. A goal of research on multimedia learning is to understand how to design multimedia learning environments that promote meaningful learning. The research base conc...

Extraneous processing occurs when suboptimal instructional design causes learners to engage in cognitive processing irrelevant to the instructional goal. This chapter explores five principles for reducing extraneous processing in multimedia learning: coherence, signaling, redundancy, spatial contiguity, and temporal contiguity. The coherence princi...

When a multimedia lesson containing complicated material is presented at a fast pace, the result can be a form of cognitive overload called essential overload. Three multimedia design methods intended to minimize essential overload are the segmenting, pre-training, and modality principles. The segmenting principle is that people learn more deeply w...

We compare the perceived naturalness of character anima-tions generated using three interpolation methods: linear Euler, spherical linear quaternion, and spherical spline quaternion. While previous work focused on the mathematical description of these interpolation types, our work studies the perceptual evaluation of animated upper body character g...

Generative learning theory posits that learners engage more deeply and produce better learning outcomes when they engage in selecting, organizing, and integrating processes during learning. The present experiments examine whether the generative learning activity of generating explanations can be extended to online multimedia lessons and whether pro...

The present study examines whether playing a video game can help improve cognitive skills needed for successful performance on cognitive tasks, such as updating , which involves continuous monitoring of incoming information that results in rapid addition or deletion of information in working memory. For example, in the n-back task, the participant...

The positivity principle states that people learn better from instructors who display positive emotions rather than negative emotions. In two experiments, students viewed a short video lecture on a statistics topic in which an instructor stood next to a series of slides as she lectured and then they took either an immediate test (Experiment 1) or a...

This study examines an aspect of the role of emotion in multimedia learning, i.e., whether participants can recognize the instructor’s positive or negative emotion based on hearing short clips involving only the instructor’s voice just as well as also seeing an embodied onscreen agent. Participants viewed 16 short video clips from a statistics lect...

The shift in learning environments due to the COVID-19 pandemic necessitates a closer look at course design, faculty approaches to teaching, and student interaction, all of which may predict learner achievement and satisfaction. Transitioning to an online environment requires the reinvention, reimagining, and applying of “e-flavors” of general lear...

A relatively new technology being used to deliver academic lessons is immersive virtual reality (IVR). This study examined whether IVR is a more effective instructional medium than other multimedia, such as a video on a computer monitor. Additionally, this study explored the underlying affective and cognitive mechanisms of learning in an immersive...

Drawing on research conducted by Mayer (2020), this article examines evidence-based principles for how to design effective instructional videos and shows how they are grounded in cognitive theories of learning and instruction. Principles include multimedia (present words and graphics), coherence (avoid extraneous material in slides and script), sig...

Gwakkamole is a focused video game designed to train the executive function skill of inhibition in young adolescents and has been shown to be enjoyable and challenging for them. This study examined whether the game was also enjoyable and challenging as well as effective for a different age cohort (i.e., young adults). According to the cognitive the...

As immersive virtual reality (IVR) systems proliferate in classrooms, it is important to understand how they affect learning outcomes and the underlying affective and cognitive processes that may cause these outcomes. Proponents argue that IVR could improve learning by increasing positive affective and cognitive processing, thereby supporting impro...

In this study, we investigate whether the affective state (happy or bored) of a human or virtual instructor in an instructional video on statistics yields different learning processes and outcomes. The positivity principle states the emotional state of the instructor is recognized by students (hypothesis 1) and affects their emotional state (hypoth...

The paper reports progress on an NSF-funded project whose goal is to research and develop multimodal affective animated pedagogical agents (APA) for different types of learners. Although the preponderance of research on APA tends to focus on the cognitive aspects of online learning, this project explores the less-studied role of affective features....

There has been much research on the effectiveness of animated pedagogical agents in an educational context, however there is little research about how the emotions they display contribute to a learner’s understanding of the lesson. The positivity principle suggests that learners should learn better from instructors with positive emotions compared t...

Students' learning from an instructional video could be affected by the instructor's emotional stance during a lesson. A first step in investigating this emotional design hypothesis is to determine whether students perceive the emotions displayed by an instructor during an instructional video. Building on Russell’s (1980, 2003) model of core affect...

We compare the perceived naturalness of character animations generated using three interpolation methods: linear Euler, spherical linear quaternion, and spherical spline quaternion. While previous work focused on the mathematical description of these interpolation types, our work studies the perceptual evaluation of animated upper body character ge...

There is a growing demand for online courses but there are few validated practices to guide instructors on how to design and deliver effective online lessons. This study investigates whether an instructor’s facing direction and eye gaze behavior can be used as cues to support student engagement, attention, and learning. Access to the instructor’s e...

This classroom experiment investigates the effects of adding representational pictures to multiple-choice and constructed-response test items to understand the role of the response format for the multimedia effect in testing. Participants were 575 fifth- and sixth-graders who answered 28 science test items - seven items in each of four experimental...

One of the most common technology-enhanced items used in large-scale K-12 testing programs is the drag-and-drop response interaction. The main research questions in this study are: (a) Does adding a drag-and-drop interface to an online test affect the accuracy of student performance? (b) Does adding a drag-and-drop interface to an online test affec...

One approach to encourage productive study strategies is to incorporate preparatory quizzes (or pre‐quizzes) in which students are required to submit answers to questions before the underlying material is covered in class. In the present study, students took an introductory mechanical engineering class that either included pre‐quizzes (treatment gr...

The goal of this study is to test the individual and combined effects of supplementing an online statistics lesson with four motivational strategies corresponding to Bandura’s (1997) four sources of self-efficacy (anxiety coping, modeling, mental practice, and effort feedback) on cognitive, motivational, and affective outcomes. Internet participant...

In this study, three experiments were conducted to explore whether adding eye movement modeling examples (EMME) to a short narrated animation could facilitate visual processing during multimedia learning and learning outcomes, and whether the effects of EMME depended on the pace of lesson or prior knowledge level of the learners. In Experiment 1, c...

Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) is being used for educational virtual field trips (VFTs) involving scenarios that may be too difficult, dangerous or expensive to experience in real life. We implemented an immersive VFT within the investigation phase of an inquiry‐based learning (IBL) climate change intervention. Students investigated the consequenc...

Immersive Virtual Reality (IVR) is being used for educational virtual field trips (VFTs) involving scenarios that may be too difficult, dangerous, or expensive to experience in real life. We implemented an immersive VFT within the investigation phase of an inquiry-based learning (IBL) climate change intervention. Students investigated the consequen...

This commentary reviews the evidence for nine principles for how to design effective example‐based instruction, drawing from the articles in this special issue. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

This paper reviews five ways to increase the effectiveness of instructional video and one way not to use instructional video. People learn better from an instructional video when the onscreen instructor draws graphics on the board while lecturing (dynamic drawing principle), the onscreen instructor shifts eye gaze between the audience and the board...

We investigated the instructional effectiveness of using an interactive and immersive virtual reality (IVR) simulation versus a video for teaching scientific knowledge in two between-subject experiments. In Experiment 1, 131 high school students (84 females) used a science simulation that involved forensic analysis of a collected DNA sample in a vi...

The transition from paper-based tests to corresponding computer-administered tests allows for the incorporation of improved interfaces that support response making. The main research question is whether innovative interfaces affect test response time and/or response accuracy. This study compared performance on banked cloze tests using a conventiona...

Instructional design is concerned with how to present verbal and visual information to learners in ways that promote effective learning processes and outcomes. Information design is concerned with how to present verbal and visual information to people in ways that promote efficient processing and understanding. The main thesis of this brief article...

Lay Description What is currently known about the subject matter Virtual reality (VR) is increasingly being used to deliver learning and training material. One field where the affordances of VR are particularly relevant is in safety training. VR provides the opportunity for trainees to safely act out realistic scenarios where making the right deci...

Mobile technology – such as tablets, cell phones, and wearable devices – has the potential to play a useful role in promoting academic learning. This potential motivates this special issue on “Mobile Technology, Learning, and Achievement: Advances in Understanding and Measuring the Role of Mobile Technology in Education” edited by Matthew L. Bernac...

Generative drawing is a learning strategy in which students draw illustrations while reading a text to depict the content of the lesson. In two experiments, students were asked to generate drawings as they read a scientific text or read the same text on influenza with author‐provided illustrations (Experiment 1), or to generate drawings or write ve...

This study explored ways to foster generative learning during a narrated video lesson about the human kidney. In a 2 x 3 between-subjects design, 196 college students were randomly assigned to a video format condition and a learning strategy condition. Students listened to oral explanations from the instructor as they viewed either a series of stat...

Fourth graders were asked to read a text and either to fill in a compare-and-contrast graphic organizer, answer a set of structured questions, take notes, or simply read the text. Both the graphic organizer and questioning groups outperformed the read-only group on a comprehension test ( d = 1.24 and 1.22, respectively) and a memory test ( d = 0.54...

The present work examines the accuracy of self-reports of study time for college students. In a 10-week Mechanical Engineering course, 99 college students accessed their textbook, homework solutions, graded work, and lecture slides via custom software that recorded objective measures of reading time. In addition, the students provided subjective ju...

There is great potential in making assessment and learning complementary. In this study, we inves-tigated the feasibility of developing a desktop virtual reality (VR) laboratory simulation on the topic of genetics, with integrated assessment using multiple choice questions based on Item Re-sponse Theory (IRT) and feedback based on the Cognitive The...

Lay Description What is already known about this topic: A pedagogical agent is a character rendered on a screen who facilitates learning. How to render the basic characteristics of the pedagogical agent is an important topic of research. Studies generally have failed to find support for matching learners' gender to the characteristics of the pedago...

The goal of the present study was to examine the effects of playing an immersive virtual reality game that included a collection of gamified cognitive tasks, Cerevrum, on specific components of cognition, including perceptual attention, mental rotation, working memory, visualization, visual field of view, and visual processing speed. Participants c...

This special issue of Learning and Instruction examines the role of emotions in academic learning, with a special focus on emotions in computer-supported academic learning (or e-learning). Three central research challenges concerning emotion in e-learning are: identification (e.g., what are the key emotions in e-learning?), measurement (e.g., how c...

How can we improve the instructional effectiveness of an online slideshow lesson? In the present study, college students received a 12‐slide multimedia slideshow lesson on how a geographic information system works. In a 2x2 design, the lesson was presented one complete slide at a time (large‐segment) or added one section of the slide at a time (sma...

The use of virtual laboratories is growing as companies and educational institutions try to expand their reach, cut costs, increase student understanding, and provide more accessible hands on training for future scientists. Many new higher education initiatives outsource lab activities so students now perform them online in a virtual environment ra...

If we carefully observe the spatial and temporal organization of students' pen strokes as they solve an engineering problem, can we predict their ability to achieve the correct answer? To address this question, 122 college students were asked to solve exam problems in an engineering course using a smartpen that recorded their writing as digitized t...

There is substantial interest in the possibility that cognitive skills can be improved by dedicated behavioral training. Yet despite the large amount of work being conducted in this domain, there is not an explicit and widely agreed upon consensus around the best methodological practices. This document seeks to fill this gap. We start from the pers...

Cambridge Core - Cognition - The Cambridge Handbook of Cognition and Education - edited by John Dunlosky

The Cambridge Handbook of Cognition and Education - edited by John Dunlosky February 2019

Visionaries offer strong claims for the educational benefits of computer games, but there is a need to test those claims with rigorous scientific research and ground them in evidence-based theories of how people learn. Three genres of game research are (a) value-added research, which compares the learning outcomes of groups that learn academic mate...

The main objective of this study was to investigate the potential of combining subjective and objective measures of learning process to uncover the mechanisms underlying the spatial contiguity effect in multimedia learning. The subjective measures of learning process were self-reported cognitive load ratings and the objective measures were eye-trac...

There is substantial interest in the possibility that cognitive skills can be improved by dedicated behavioral training. Yet despite the large amount of work being conducted in this domain, there is not an explicit and widely agreed upon consensus around the best methodological practices. This document seeks to fill this gap. We start from the pers...

This study tested 3 instructor presence features in learning from video lectures: dynamic drawings, eye contact with the camera, and instructor visibility. In 2 experiments, college students watched a video lecture about the human kidney, which consisted of a series of drawings and a spoken explanation from the instructor, and then took a written p...

This study examines the effects of including interactive graphic organizers into a whole-class PowerPoint lesson as an instructional approach intended to improve student engagement and generative learning in schools. A software application was developed and integrated into PowerPoint that makes it possible for the instructor to fill in empty graphi...

Game‐like educational apps are intended to boost learner motivation leading to better learning outcomes. To test this idea about the value of gamification, college students (n = 64) learned Italian by playing the online language learning game, Duolingo at home for seven sessions, or learned the same material through watching an online slideshow for...

What is the effect of seductive details on learning outcomes? What are the boundary conditions of seductive detail effects? How do seductive details affect learning? These are the kinds of questions addressed in this special issue on seductive details. This special issue contains 11 articles presenting original results that take a new look at seduc...