April Yan, Ph.D.

April Yan is a Senior Data Analyst in the Teaching + Learning Commons. Her work involves understanding and improving the learning outcomes and the learning environment for both online and traditional learners.

April earned her Ph.D. in Learning, Design, and Technology from Penn State University (2019), with a Graduate Minor on Education Psychology. As a learning analytics researcher, she conducted various quantitative and qualitative projects with instructors and faculties with the different disciplinary backgrounds at Penn State. She has led or co-led several learning analytics research projects to evaluate the effectiveness of instructional intervention (such as the flipped classroom approach), the effect of gamification on student engagement and performance in an online environment, and using EEG to measure student cognitive load during programming language learning, etc. She has presented her research in conferences such as AERA, AECT, EDM, FIE, etc. She is happy to join the Commons team to support faculties and education specialists on improving student achievements in various learning environments.