Stephen Marquard

Stephen Marquard is Deputy Director in CILT, where he shapes UCT's digital learning ecosystem and leads initiatives that harness data analytics to provide actionable insights that support student success.

As lead of the Learning Technologies team, Stephen is responsible for UCT’s campus learning platforms including Amathuba (D2L Brightspace), Opencast, the Explorance student feedback platform and the Learning Store, UCT’s short course portal. As the lead of UCT’s Data Analytics for Student Success (DASS) initiative, a cross-institutional initiative that draws on expertise from multiple stakeholders, Stephen builds UCT's capacity to use data meaningfully in support of student learning and equity. This includes providing detailed course analytics and performance reports to academic staff at multiple levels, management of large-scale student and staff surveys, AI-supported qualitative analysis of student feedback, and the development of learning analytics dashboards to support student advising.

Stephen co-leads UCT’s AI Teaching Innovation Grants programme and is responsible for scaling up self-service AI capabilities on institutional platforms for teaching and learning at UCT. Current research interests include digital transformation leadership and better understanding factors that catalyse educational innovation in university contexts.

Stephen has contributed to multiple open source projects over his career, and is currently a Board member of the Opencast Project, the open source video management and lecture capture platform.