According to constructivism, people construct their own knowledge (Phillips, 1997). Thus, learning is a constructive process, where students actively construct their knowledge through interaction with the environment and through reorganization of their mental structures. The task of educators is to provide opportunities to knowledge construction process through meaningful and cognitively engaging tasks. Mayer (1997) has presented the generative theory of multimedia learning, which explains how learners connect the visual and verbal information. According to Mayer's theory active learning occurs when a learner engages three cognitive processes: selecting, organizing and integrating. Learner selects relevant information and then organizes this information into a coherent mental representation. According to Paivio this (1991) information is coded and represented both verbally and visually. When learner has coded the same information in both representation systems he or she can build correspondence between them. This process is called integration. The main idea of generative theory is that engaging in appropriate cognitive activities during learning facilitates understanding (Hall, Bailey and Tillman, 1997). In many earlier generative theory studies cognitive activities is employed by adding texts or audio to graphics and animations. Therefore Hall et al. (1997) stresses that Mayer and his colleagues have not addressed the possibility that verbal or visual information can also be used to generate a representation in the other domain. In their study students were asked to generate a visual representation (drawing) from the written text. When students constructed drawings of text they were engaging in a generative process that would also result in an integration between the two representational systems, text and self-generated illustration and therefore increase understanding. Hall et al. found out that students with text and illustrations and students who generated their own illustrations performed better in on a problem-solving test than students with text only. In addition there were no significant differences between students with text and illustrations and students who generated their own illustrations. In this study there are four different multimedia presentation conditions designed on the basis of principles presented by Mayer and Moreno (1998). The purpose is to study how these conditions effect in learning outcomes of different pupils. Nevertheless, a major purpose of this study is to compare the effectiveness of reader-generated illustrations to experimenter-provided multimedia elements such as graphics and animations. The compared conditions are: 1. basic text + animations with audio texts 2. basic text + graphics with audio texts 3. basic text + self-generated illustrations 4. basic text Control group (no educational effect) The participants of the study are 10-12 years old children. Study consists of pre-test, educational effect and post-test. Measurements will be made in spring 2003. The basic text is a description about infection and how human body fights against it. In conditions 1-2 there are five animations or graphics. In condition 3 pupils are asked to draw a picture about these five subjects on the basis of the text. References Hall, V. C., Bailey, J. & Tillman C. (1997) Can student- generated illustrations Be Worth Ten Thousand Words? Journal of Educational Psychology, 89(4), 667-681 Mayer, R. E. (1997). Multimedia learning: Are we asking the right questions? Educational Psychologist, 32(1), 1- 19 Mayer, R. E. & Moreno, R. (1998). A cognitive theory of multimedia learning: implications for design principles. http://www.unm.edu/~moreno/PDFS/chi.pdf Paivio, A. 1991. Dual coding theory: Retrospect and current ststus. Canadian Journal of Psychology, vol45, 255-287. Phillips, D.C. 1997. How, why, what, when, and where: Perspectives on constructivism in psychology and education. Issues in Education, 3 (2), 151-194.