April Yan, Ph.D.

April Yan is a Senior Data Analyst at the Teaching and Learning Commons at UC San Diego. Her work focuses on analyzing and improving student engagement in both online and in-person learning environments. She specializes in assessing educational programs, services, and initiatives, leveraging data-driven insights to drive program improvement, and enhance teaching and learning experiences across the campus. April has shared her expertise at conferences such as the California Association for Institutional Research (CAIR), the Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (POD), and the UC Assessment Conference. 

April holds a Master of Education in Educational Technology from Tsinghua University, China, and a Ph.D. in Learning, Design, and Technology from Penn State University, with a Graduate Minor in Educational Psychology. During her time at Penn State, she conducted diverse quantitative and qualitative research projects. Her work included evaluating the effectiveness of instructional interventions (such as the flipped classroom approach), exploring the impact of gamification on student engagement and performance in online environments, and using EEG technology to measure cognitive load during programming language learning. She has presented her research at prominent conferences, including the American Educational Research Association (AERA), the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT), Educational Data Mining (EDM), and Frontiers in Education (FIE).