June Ahn

Professor UC Irvine

  • Irvine CA

June Ahn is a Professor of Learning Sciences and Research-Practice Partnerships at the UC Irvine (UCI) School of Education.

Contact

UC Irvine

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Biography

June Ahn is a Professor of Learning Sciences and Research-Practice Partnerships at the UC Irvine (UCI) School of Education. He is also a Senior Associate Dean at the UCI School of Education, and he conducts research at the intersection of participatory design, technology, education, and community partnerships.

June is the founding director of OCEAN (Orange County Educational Advancement Network), which supports Research-Practice Partnerships at the UCI School of Education.

Prior to UCI, June was an Associate Professor at New York University (NYU) in the Digital Media Design for Learning and Games for Learning programs. He was an Assistant/Associate Professor at the University of Maryland (UMD), College Park, in the College of Information Studies with a joint appointment in the College of Education. During his time at UMD, June was a faculty member at and directed the Human-Computer Interaction Lab (HCIL, one of the oldest HCI labs in the country).

Areas of Expertise

Data Use and Analytics
Human-Computer Interaction
Learning Technologies
Research-Practice Partnerships
Educational Technology

Accomplishments

Distinguished Paper Award

2019

International Conference on Research in Equity and Sustained Participation in Engineering, Computing, and Technology

Best Paper Award

2012

Association for Information Science and Technology Annual Meeting – SIGUSE

Lilly Fellowship

2012-2013

Center for Teaching Excellence, Teaching Award

Education

University of Southern California, Los Angeles

PhD

Urban Education Policy

2010

Columbia University

MA

Computing and Education

2006

Brown University

BA

Computing in Education

2003

Affiliations

  • International Society of the Learning Sciences : Member
  • Association for Computing Machinery : Member
  • American Educational Research Association : Member

Media Appearances

How Educators Can Maximize AI Right Now: Reflections from Our Team

Digital Promise  online

2025-04-14

Led by Digital Promise in collaboration with the Anaheim Union High School District, aiEdu, and the University of California, Irvine, represented by Professor June Ahn, the summit ensured that the bulk of the programming featured educators and centered student voice. As one student participant shared at the summit, “Conversations about AI in education shouldn’t just include students; they should start with students.”

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Commentary: Let’s redefine student success to measure what really matters

EdSource  online

2025-02-19

June Ahn, UC Irvine School of Education professor and Michael Matsuda write, “In collaboration with UC Irvine professor June Ahn and the nonprofit education technology organization eKadence, Anaheim Union is developing and piloting an AI-enhanced learning strategy that redefines how student talent is measured.”

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Anaheim Collaborative: New Ways to Measure Students’ Progress

Carnegie Corporation of New York  online

2024-12-04

June Ahn at the University of California, Irvine, is the district’s research partner. With support from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, his team is creating an AI tool that analyzes students’ performance and reflections so that teachers can understand a student’s growth so that they can quickly see how to improve instruction.

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Event Appearances

Unpacking play and learning through the experience of teachers and students

Annual Meeting of the American Education Research Association  

Parents and co-designers and co-researchers in playful learning landscapes projects

Annual Meeting of the American Education Research Association  

Expansive ways of knowing and improving: Using equity tools and approaches to support equity of participation in learning activities

International Society of the Learning Sciences Annual Meeting  

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Research Grants

Co-designing AI Assisted Family Math and Science Learning in Health Care Environments

Heising-Simons Foundation

2024-2026

The Smart Playground: Computational Thinking through Robotics in Early Childhood

National Science Foundation

2023-2026

Fraction Ball: Embodied Fraction and Decimal Learning

EF+Math Foundation

2023-2025

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Articles

Buckets of fun: Impacts of fraction ball activities on students' math-related emotions

Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology

2024

Rational number learning can cause frustration and negative emotions for elementary school students. Fraction Ball, a play-based math intervention, allows students to actively learn rational numbers through engaging and interactive activities. Based on a cluster-randomized trial with 16 teachers and 360 students, our pre-registered analyses showed moderate positive impacts of Fraction Ball on overall students' self-reported math-related emotions.

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Leveraging cultural forms in human-centred learning analytics design

British Journal of Educational Technology

2023

In this article, we offer theory-grounded narratives of a 4-year participatory design process of a Learning Analytics tool with K-12 educators. We describe how we design-in-partnership by leveraging educators' routines, values and cultural representations into the designs of digital dashboards.

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Designing culturally situated playful environments for early STEM learning with a Latine community

Early Childhood Research Quarterly

2023

Children from underserved, minoritized, and immigrant families have less access to early out-of-school STEM learning opportunities. Playful Learning Landscapes increase the accessibility of early STEM learning in everyday public spaces (e.g., bus stops, grocery stores) by merging principles of guided play and STEM learning goals with local community's values.

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