Amber Rowland

Amber Rowland, Ph.D. is an Associate Research Professor at the University of Kansas, Achievement and Assessment Institute and Center for Research on Learning. She specializes in collaborative, practical and engaging adult professional learning with an emphasis on evidence-based practice and powerful integration of technology. She is particularly interested in the use of conversation in learning and is constantly pursuing methods for tapping into the collective capacity of educators through virtual coaching, virtual communities of practice, and the use of VECTOR, a virtual professional learning model that she and colleagues developed. She has been Co-Principal Investigator on multiple projects funded by NSF, OSEP, and IES. Current grants include Project VOISS and Project iKNOW, $2.5 million each through OSEP studying how extended reality and artificial intelligence can help middle school students with Autism and learning disabilities learn and practice social competency skills and how best to support educators who implement and support student generalization of learned skills to the classroom. She is also Co-PI on another $2.5 million OSEP project called APLM WRITE, which includes a professional learning dashboard system designed to support middle school coaches, educators, and their students with disabilities as they learn to write. Her experiences range from kindergarten to the college classroom where she has taught at multiple levels, both face-to-face and online.