Corrinne Shaw
Corrinne is an Associate Professor at Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Centre for Research in Engineering Education (CREE) at UCT.
She engages with the messy, concrete, practical world of practice (whether it be fieldwork in the classroom or workplace) using appropriate theoretical lenses to understand (and possibly intervene in) the learning transitions of students and practitioners. Her primary research activities encompass two areas related to transitions, firstly, the transition between professional practice and academic practice; and the transition from university to professional practice. These areas of research are concerned with transformative learning. Becoming a management practitioner through formal academic study or becoming an engineer through the translation of academic engineering knowledge to professional knowledge requires transformations that involves identity shifts. This research contributes to understanding of how these transformations are effected and consequently informs recommendations for learning design and success in academic and professional practice.
Anita Campbell
Anita Campbell is an Associate Professor in the Academic Support Programme for Engineering at the University of Cape Town, where she teaches first-year engineering mathematics. She is also Deputy Director of the Centre for Research in Engineering Education at UCT and a co-founder of the Centre for Wellbeing and Flourishing at UCT. Her research sits at the intersection of mathematics education, coaching, engineering education, and positive psychology. She is particularly interested in how students rebuild academic momentum after early setbacks, and how teaching practices, learning environments, and coaching-informed approaches support meaningful progress.
Her doctoral work on growth mindsets showed that efforts to shift students’ beliefs about learning are most effective when embedded in classroom practices and institutional cultures, rather than treated as purely individual traits.
More recently, her work has expanded to include coaching-informed pedagogy and positive psychology interventions that support student well-being, agency, and persistence in mathematically demanding programmes. She also explores the role of educational technologies and AI tools in enabling active, engaged learning.
Renée Smit
Renée Smit worked as a senior Academic Development Lecturer (ADL) in the department of Electrical Engineering. ADLs work on the boundary between the disciplinary expertise and principled pedagogic practice, enabling academic staff to develop as reflective practitioners. Her work also involved support for curriculum development and various aspects of student development.
Reneé obtained her PhD in Engineering Education from the University of Cape Town. Her research interest is the field of higher education studies broadly, and in particular engineering professional education. Her work has two foci. She works at the intersection of professional education in engineering, the nature of engineering knowledge and the applied philosophy of engineering. The research has implications for educating engineers but also for collaborative work between practitioners in science and engineering. The other aspect of her research is closely aligned with her work as an ADL. It involves scholarly reflection on the student experience in engineering education and exploring alternatives to a deficit mind-set in relation to student diversity.
Brandon Collier-Reed
Brandon Collier-Reed is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. It was while pursuing a PhD in low-cost automation and robotics that his fascination with teaching his first-year class convinced him to switch directions completely and embark on a PhD that considered technological literacy. Acknowledging that students bring with them to the engineering classroom different understandings of the nature of technology as well as different levels of technological literacy, he turned his research focus to what was happening in the classroom and its influence on student engagement.
His current research is on understanding student engagement with a specific interest on how the use of ICTs in the classroom can impact engagement. His most recent work, understanding the use of a “backchannel” during lectures, has highlighted the levels of alienation experienced by many students in a classroom space. He has typically adopted and interpretivist approach to his research and is probably best known for the work he has undertaken using the approach known as phenomenography.
Brandon is the past President of the South African Society of Engineering Education, a Fellow of the South African Institution of Mechanical Engineering and is a registered Professional Mechanical Engineer with the Engineering Council of South Africa.
Andrew Deacon
Andrew Deacon works as a Senior Learning Designer in the Centre for Innovation in Learning and Teaching (CILT). The work of CILT responds to teaching and learning challenges at UCT and the broader higher education environment through learner-centred pedagogic practices. The learning design work is on curriculum and course design projects across the university, with a focus on blended and online courses design. His work also involves support for Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), large-scale assessment and learning analytics.
Andrew obtained his MSc in Computer Science. His research interest is in the field of higher education development broadly, and in particular learning design. His current research has included investigating various aspects of the UCT MOOCs project and how these interest with formal teaching at the university. This work has involved exploring alternatives for how courses can be designed to be more flexible and engaging within a changing university course landscape. He has also been involved in learning analytics for large-scale assessments to measure change and inform curriculum development.
Kalpana Ramesh Kanjee
Kalpana Ramesh Kanjee is a Lecturer at the University of Cape Town in the Academic Development Programme (ADP) in the Centre for Higher Education (CHED). She holds a BSc in electro-mechanical engineering and an MSc in engineering management. Over the past 17 years she has taught mathematics for engineers in the ADP unit, ASPECT. Her research interests lie in the broad areas of teaching and learning and student transition. Her PhD studies use grounded theory methodology in the extended programme space, with a focus on care and learning communities.
Bruce Kloot
Bruce Kloot is a Senior Academic Development Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. His undergraduate degree was obtained from the University of the Witwatersrand in Chemical Engineering while his Master’s was in the area of Energy Studies, focusing on issues of rural development and drawing on anthropology to understand a rural energy intervention. After spending some time in secondary education, working as a teacher to support educationally disadvantaged learners, he took up a position at UCT that has developed into his current role.
At about this time, Bruce embarked on his PhD in Engineering Education, being supervised by Prof Jenni Case (now at Virginia Tech, USA) and Delia Marshall (at the University of the Western Cape). His doctorate drew on the theoretical tools of the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu to provide a critical perspective on extended degree programmes in South African higher education. He graduated in 2011 and has since published a number of articles and book chapters in the fields of engineering education and higher education studies.
Bruce is on the Board of REEN (Research in Engineering Education Network) and is the Conference Chair for the upcoming Research in Engineering Education Symposium (REES 2019) that is to be held in Cape Town.
Siddique Motala
Siddique Motala is a senior lecturer in Academic Development in the Department of Civil Engineering. He recently moved to UCT after lecturing in the Department of Civil Engineering & Surveying at CPUT for over a decade. He mainly taught geomatics students who were studying towards qualifications in surveying or Geographic Information Systems (GIS). He is a trained land surveyor and holds a PhD in Education. For his PhD, he researched the use of storytelling in engineering education, mediated by a critical posthumanist stance. His research is focused on posthumanism, the scholarship of teaching & learning, historical mapping and digital storytelling. He is especially interested in decolonisation and innovative pedagogies in engineering education.
He is recognised for his expertise on the mapping of the historic site of District Six, and works closely with the District Six Museum, filmmakers, historians and archaeologists. He is an Associate Editor of the journal CriSTaL (Critical Studies in Teaching and Learning). He was a recipient of the 2017 HELTASA/CHE National Excellence in Teaching and Learning Award.
Ekaterina Rzyankina
Ekaterina Rzyankina is an ADL lecturer in Electrical Engineering and a researcher at the Centre for Research in Engineering Education (CREE), University of Cape Town, in Cape Town, South Africa. Her work sits at the intersection of engineering education, digital technology and Artificial Intelligence, focusing on how generative AI, e-textbooks and analytics tools reshape learning, feedback and postgraduate supervision. Drawing on Cultural-Historical Activity Theory, she examines how digital mediating artefacts (tools) transform educational systems, redistribute expertise and generate new forms of agency and contradiction. She designs and evaluates technology-enabled pedagogies that strengthen epistemological access in mathematics, physics and STEM for marginalised students in the Global South. Ekaterina contributes to communities of practice in engineering education, and she supports emerging researchers through mentoring and academic coaching. She addresses equity and inclusion in AI. Her current projects develop practical guidance for responsible AI use in higher education, addressing integrity, authorship and scholarly development.
Nicky Wolmarans
Nicky Wolmarans is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Cape Town in the Department of Civil Engineering. She holds a BSc and MSc in mechanical engineering and a PhD in engineering education. After a short time in industry she took up a lecturing post in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. Over the past 17 years she has taught across the civil and mechanical engineering programmes, in design and engineering science courses. She also contributes to a postgraduate course in knowledge and curriculum in a Higher Education Studies programme and will be convening a new PhD programme specialising in engineering education commencing in 2019. Her current position is that of ‘Academic Development Lecturer’ in the Department of Civil Engineering, a somewhat contested position introduced in 2008 in an effort to improve the educational experience of students with the hope that it would improve success rates. With a PhD in engineering education, Dr Wolmarans’ research interests lie in understanding impediments to student progression that disciplinary knowledge introduces and in so doing, broadening access to knowledge that makes a difference.