Good morning. And we're here with Rich Mayer this
morning and thank you so much for joining us and
Rich, would you start by telling us a little
bit about yourself? Well, sure. Well,
I'm a professor of psychology here at University of California
Santa Barbara, um on the shores of the Ppacific
Ocean. And my research really involves what I would
call applying the science of learning to education. So
this is kind of an interdisciplinary field that's at the
intersection of cognitive psychology and education and technology. And
in particular, at least recently, I've gotten interested
in what I call multimedia learning, which is how
people learn from words and pictures and how we can
help them learn more effectively. Thank you. Sure
. How long have you been at U c santa
Barbara? Um well, I um I know this
will be shocking. I've been here since 1975.
You're probably thinking? He looks so young. But
this was essentially my first job I am after I
graduated from University of michigan. um I taught at
indiana University for two years and then I came out
here. Been here ever since. I've been here
ever since. Yes. How did you get interested
in this field? Um yeah, that's a really
interesting question. I don't really think about that sometimes
, but I think my my focus has always been
on the question of how can we help people learn
in ways so they can take what they've learned and
apply it to new situations. So that's kind of
the classic issue of transfer that's, you know,
been with both psychology and education from the very start
of both of those fields. So it's a it's
a issue that has a long history, but it's
also one that I think is really important um both
theoretically and practically. So I like a question that
has both theoretical um, goals and practical goals.
So really what I've been trying to understand is I
guess how do you teach for transfer? How do
you promote meaningful learning? So that's kind of a
company interested or what got me started? Well speaking
of getting started, could you describe your career path
, talk a little bit about where you went to
grad school and then take us through descriptions of your
different jobs along the way. Sure. Sure.
So even a little bit before that I guess You
know I guess I'm a product of public education from
kindergarten through graduate school. I my K. 12
education was in Cincinnati public schools where I kind of
enjoyed the nerdy subjects of math and science. And
then I got a B. A. I guess
a B. S. In psychology at Miami University
in Oxford Ohio which is just really near Cincinnati.
And then for graduate school I just went up the
road to ANn Arbor. Um And I was fortunate
enough to be admitted to a graduate program in cognitive
psychology and to work with Jim Green Oh at the
University of Michigan. Um And that's really where I
developed what my interests in this field that I'm involved
in now. Okay good. And then of course
you went out you went on to Indiana from right
graduating and then I graduated in 1973. And my
first job was yes a visiting assistant professor job at
Indiana University in bloomington. Um Where coincidentally our first
son was born so we've never let him forget he's
a Hoosier and then I had the good fortune to
land a job here at U. C. S
. B. In 1975. And I've I've been
here ever since. How would you describe your research
interests and aspirations when you first started your career?
Um I would say um you know, my interests
and aspirations probably haven't really changed that much. I've
always been interested in uh the issue of transfer and
how do you how how can you teach people so
that they can use what they've learned a new situation
? So that's kind of been the driving question,
kind of the specific venues I've studied that in have
changed maybe a little bit from more paper based environments
to more computer based environments, but the same underlying
issue has been pretty consistent. What were some of
the major ideas or approaches that stimulated your professional growth
? Yeah, that's a really good question. Um
So, you know, just in terms of concepts
, I think kind of the issues that caught my
attention as a grad student and still I are still
probably motivating my work are the distinction between meaningful and
rote learning. Like what um what happens when somebody
engages in meaningful learning? What's um uh what are
the cognitive processes and what are the what kind of
knowledge is produced when you engage in meaningful learning rather
than rote learning? And that's also related to the
classic, really gestalt idea of insight. Why are
some people able to come up with creative solutions to
problems and how can we prepare them to better be
able to do that? So those are kind of
, I guess some of the concepts I've been trying
to deal with. And then let's see in terms
of theoretical frameworks, I guess I've been working in
a information processing theoretical framework. So looking at idea
that learning occurs in a human information processing system that
has a very limited working memory and that that really
dictates a lot about how to design effective instruction I
think. And I guess what else from a kind
of method, a logical point of view, I've
kind of taken a uh an experimental approach and focused
on trying to run rigorous experiments to answer the questions
I have. Could I wear off since we're on
the topic of your research interests regarding uh principles that
guide meaningful learning. Can you talk a little bit
, would you feel about talking a little bit about
principles? Sure, support me. Yeah. You
know, I think what I've been been trying to
do over the years is too contribute to the science
of instruction by developing research based principles for how to
design effective instruction. And I've been trying to contribute
to the science of learning really, by trying to
come up with the research based theory of how people
learn that that's relevant for education for more authentic learning
situations. Couple of decades, we've come up with
about a dozen research based principles for how to design
um what I call multimedia learning. So this is
learning that involves words and graphics, which is most
instruction of power point presentation at textbook uh um you
know, uh computer based training, they all are
generally multimedia learning environments. Um what's another? So
that's a technique that's kind of aimed at what I
call reducing extraneous processing because it's reducing your standing back
and forth. A technique that's kind of focused on
what I call managing essential processing. Essential processing involves
uh learning what the topic is complex and it might
it might be overwhelming, but we can't really reduce
the amount of information because that's what we want you
to learn. So one technique is what I call
segmenting, which is to break a complicated lesson into
manageable parts and make sure the learner understands each part
before you move on to the next one. So
if you have a continuous narrated animation on how lightning
storms work, One thing we've done is to break
it into short segments of about 10 seconds each,
and after each one, you click on a continue
button to go onto the next one. That allows
the learner too, you know, digest one idea
before moving on to the next one, So we
call that segmenting, That makes sense. Yeah.
And the third kind of category of techniques is what
we call fostering generative processing. So generative processing is
the deeper kind of processing that involves relating what you're
learning to prior knowledge and mentally reorganizing it. And
one technique that we've looked at for doing accomplishing.
That is what we call the personalization principle. Where
instead of using formal language, we use uh conversational
language like 1st and 2nd person you're saying I and
you instead of third person or if it's an online
tutor, having the tutor be polite rather than just
giving direct feedback, Being a little polite with the
feedback. Who are some of the people who had
the most impact on your professional growth. Yeah,
that's a that's a good question to a lot of
people. I mean, I just am indebted to
so many people, but you know, starting with
my parents, I guess, who really instilled a
love of learning and and also uh respect for hard
work. Um, and I guess my teachers along
the way who gave me the self confidence that I
might be able to, I actually learned something.
Um um, and I guess in graduate school I
owe a debt to my mentor Jim Green. Oh
, at University of Michigan and certainly over the years
, my students and colleagues, I've just been really
lucky to be able to work with some really brilliant
and talented people who have really stimulated a lot of
my own thinking. What do you think was the
greatest accomplishment of your career so far and why,
you know what I've been trying to do? I
don't know how successful I've been is to, I
think, as I mentioned before, contribute to the
science of learning by developing a theory of learning that
kind of is based on more Authentic learning situations.
I mean, the science of learning has a long
history that goes back more than 100 years. But
a lot of it was based on kind of artificial
learning situations. And I think by trying to study
more authentic situations, we can develop more powerful theories
of how people learn. So that's, that's what
I've been trying to do. And uh you know
the theory that I've been working on, I call
the cognitive theory of multimedia learning, which is really
just borrows ideas from lots of other people. I
don't really think it's it's not original. But what
I'm trying to do is come up with an explanation
of you know, how learning works and kind of
the three main cognitive processes in meaningful learning according to
that theory, are selecting the relevant information. So
when you're in a learning situation, one thing you
have to do as a learner is just pay attention
to what's important. So I call that selecting relevant
information. You have to mentally organize that into a
coherent representation. I call that organizing. So we
have to mentally organize the incoming information into a cognitive
structure. And then lastly you the third processes integrating
, which involves I'm connecting the incoming information with relevant
prior knowledge that you activate from long term memory and
also connecting it with other incoming information. So those
three processes selecting, organizing and integrating are kind of
at the heart of I think this theory of meaningful
learning. So that's one thing I've been trying to
do. And then in terms of a science of
instruction, I've been trying to come up with research
based principles of how you should design instruction that have
an empirical base to them and also a theoretical base
to them. So we've already discussed some of that
. How would you like to be remembered within our
profession? I'll leave that to other people do.
But you know, one thing I've kind of tried
to emphasize is that in education it's very easy to
slip into a focus on ideology and opinions and fads
and a lot of educational practice is is based on
those things. So I've tried to at least show
that you can take a scientific approach to a lot
of educational issues and that it's possible to answer a
lot of educational questions by, you know, rigorous
scientific evidence rather than ideology or opinions or feds.
And that's a significant contribution. It's a constant struggle
sometimes in the field of education too, to show
the benefit of a scientific approach we need that in
your example. Thank you. No, I didn't
ask you this earlier, but in my email,
but would you mind talking about your plans for the
future? Oh, sure. I've um, you
know, I have never really planned out a research
path. I just kind of go with what seems
interesting at the time because I think intellectual curiosity is
really what should drive your research. So I try
to study things that I just um very interested in
. So I've, you know, I've kind of
developed, I kind of have moved from, like
I said, studying paper based, um learning situations
to more computer based. So that's a lot of
the multimedia learning research, but that's kind of gotten
interested now in educational games. So I I've been
starting to try to understand whether educational games can be
a useful device for helping people learn science and math
and other subjects, because there are a lot of
strong claims made for educational games. And there are
a lot of really smart visionaries who have these very
nice pictures of what the future is going to be
based on games. But I think somebody needs to
do the, you know, the basic research on
what works and what doesn't work and what are the
features of games that are effective or not effective?
So that's I call that the value added approach so
that that's what I've kind of gotten an interest in
lately. Okay, good. Well, we'll look
forward to your contributions in those areas to, Okay
. Thank you so much. Rich. I don't
have any further questions. Well, thank you very
much. I enjoyed it.