How Meaningful Learning Works: My 50-Year Quest
Speaker
Richard E. Mayer, Psychological and Brain Sciences, 2020-2021 RecipientLocation
University Center, Corwin PavilionInfo
For the past 50 years, Richard Mayer’s research program has been driven by a deceptively straightforward question: How can we help people learn in ways so they take what they have learned and apply it to new situations? This question concerns the classic issue of transfer—the effects of prior learning on new learning—which has been central to both psychology and education since their beginnings more than a century ago. In this lecture, Professor Mayer will share the fruits of his efforts to figure out how to promote meaningful learning, based on hundreds of experiments conducted by his colleagues and him. He also will present an evidence-based theory of how meaningful learning works. Specifically, he will examine three inter-related questions: How do people learn? (i.e., the science of learning), How can we help people learn? (i.e., the science of instruction), and How can we tell what people have learned? (i.e., the science of assessment). In short, this lecture focuses on what his research has to say about teaching for transfer.
BIO | Richard E. Mayer is Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research interests involve applying the science of learning to education. He served as President of Division 15 (Educational Psychology) of the American Psychological Association and Vice President of the American Educational Research Association for Division C (Learning and Instruction). He received the E. L. Thorndike Award for career achievement in educational psychology, the Scribner Award for outstanding research in learning and instruction, the Jonassen Award for excellence in research in the field of instructional design and technology, the James McKeen Cattell Award for a lifetime of outstanding contributions to applied psychological research, the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Contribution of Applications of Psychology to Education and Training Award, and the Citizen Psychologist Citation for four decades of service as a local school board member.
He has been recognized in Contemporary Educational Psychology as the most productive educational psychologist in the world and by research.com as among the top 100 research psychologists in the world. Google Scholar lists him as the most cited educational psychologist in the world (with over 230,000 citations and an h-index of 186). He serves on the editorial boards of 12 journals mainly in educational psychology. He is the author or co-author of more than 800 publications including 35 books, such as Multimedia Learning: Third Edition, e-Learning and the Science of Instruction: Fifth Edition (with R. Clark), Learning as a Generative Activity (with L. Fiorella), Applying the Science of Learning, Computer Games for Learning, Handbook of Research on Learning and Instruction: Second Edition (co-edited with P. Alexander), and The Cambridge Handbook of Multimedia Learning: Third Edition (co-edited with L. Fiorella).
