G. Alex Ambrose
G. Alex Ambrose serves as program director of assessment and analytics at Notre Dame Learning's Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence, where he is also the founder of the Research & Assessment for Learning (ReAL) Design Lab. As a professor of the practice, he holds concurrent appointments in the Education, Schooling, and Society and Computing and Digital Technologies programs. In addition, Alex is a faculty fellow of Notre Dame's Institute for Educational Initiatives and Pulte Institute for Global Development.
In both his research and his teaching, Alex works to advance his mission: to fight for and create the conditions necessary for the liberation of learning and the alleviation of unnecessary anxiety and harm in education for both students and faculty. Alex envisions his role as that of a learning experience architect, pioneering more inclusive learning environments and authentic assessment.
His current research focuses on applied learning research, design, and evaluation, including learning analytics, active learning classrooms, flexible learning spaces, digital portfolios, and badges. Alex’s work has been published in a range of academic and technology-based journals and has earned him the 2015 Campus Technology Innovator Award as well as recognition by Google, IBM, USAID, and the Bill and Melinda Gates and National Science Foundations. He regularly serves as an international learning ambassador, educational developer, consultant, and evaluator for grants, programs, and universities in South America, North America, the Far East, Europe, and the Middle East. He comes with two decades of teaching experience in higher education and K-12, ranging from Blue-Ribbon elementary schools in suburban New Jersey and downtown Detroit to both public and private universities and community colleges—face-to-face, fully online, and hybrid. Prior to a career in higher education, Alex served a combat tour in Baghdad as an infantry platoon leader and taught military leadership as an Officer Candidate School Instructor and a Professor of Military Science (ROTC) as a Captain in the U.S. Army National Guard.
