Watch our video, Richard Mayer Interview on Learning in Virtual Reality as it premieres on YouTube at 6:00 AM PT on 12/22/2022.
Join us as elearningdesigners.org chats with the one and only Dr. Richard Mayer on Learning in Virtual Reality! Mayer is a prolific educational researcher and Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California Santa Barbara. He is widely known in the Learning and Development world for Mayer’s Principles, a set of 15 multimedia principles for designing effective learning based on human cognitive architecture. This means optimizing learning for how human brains process information in our different memory stores (sensory, working, and long-term).
First, let’s learn about Dr. Richard Mayer’s latest research in Immersive Virtual Reality also known as VR. Next, we’ll explore how to incorporate Mayer’s Principles into VR learning experiences! In this interview with Dr. Richard Mayer, we discuss one of Mayer’s recent 2022 publications in the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, “The Promise and Pitfalls of Learning in Immersive Virtual Reality.” In this article, Mayer and his co-authors, Guido Makransky and Jocelyn Parong, state that “a pitfall of learning in immersive virtual reality is that high immersion can create distractions in the form of increased emotional arousal and increased levels of interesting but irrelevant perceptual richness.”
Listen in as Richard Mayer responds to the question, “Given the duality of IVR being both engaging and distracting, what can learning designers do to reduce distractions while trying to retain engagement?” To learn more about Dr. Richard Mayer’s research in immersive virtual reality, check out the article discussed, “The Promise and Pitfalls of Learning in Immersive Virtual Reality,” in the International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10447318.2022.2108563.
Dr. Richard Mayer was named the #1 most productive educational psychologist in the world in Contemporary Educational Psychology. We are so lucky and appreciative to have had this opportunity to interview one of Learning Science’s brightest minds and a true living legend in the educational world.
Additional Resources
Pick up your copy of Dr. Richard Mayer’s latest book of research on Amazon or Cambridge University Press. You can also view our interview with Richard Mayer on Mayer’s Principles and Accessibility.