Richard E. Mayer is professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), where he has served since 1975. He received a Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Michigan, in 1973, and served as visiting assistant professor of psychology at Indiana Univer sity, from 1973 to 1975. He is past-president of the Division of Educational Psychology of the American Psychological Association, former editor of Educational Psychologist and former co-editor of Instructional Science, for mer chair of the UCSB Department of Psychology, and the year 2000 re cipient of the E. L. Thorndike Award for career achievement in educa tional psychology. He was ranked #1 as the most productive researcher in the field of educational psychology for 1991-2001 (Contemporary Ed ucational Psychology, Vol. 28, pp. 422-430). Prof. Mayer is the author of 18 books and more than 250 articles and chapters, including The Promise of Educational Psychology: Vols. 1 and 2 (1999, 2002), Multimedia Learning, (2001), Learning and Instruction (2003), and E-Learning and the Science of Instruction (with R. Clark, 2003). He serves on the editorial boards of 11 journals mainly in educational psychology. For the past 35 years he has conducted research on how instructional methods affect learning, and in the past 15 years, his research has focused on multimedia learning. In this interview, he discusses his current research agenda concerning multimedia learning and responds to critical questions regarding web-based instruction and the nature of educational research.