Richard E. Mayer

Richard E. Mayer (born 1947) is an American educational psychologist and Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he has taught since 1975. He earned his doctorate in psychology at the University of Michigan in 1973 and was a visiting assistant professor at Indiana University before moving to Santa Barbara. His best known contribution is multimedia learning theory, which holds that people learn best when words and pictures are presented together, and he has written extensively on problem solving and on the design of educational multimedia. He has authored more than 390 publications, including 23 books such as Multimedia Learning, Learning and Instruction, and E-Learning and the Science of Instruction with Ruth Colvin Clark. He received the E. L. Thorndike Award for career achievement in educational psychology in 2000 and the American Psychological Association award for applications of psychology to education and training in 2008.