Biography

Ms Terblanche only started her research career at a later age. Although Ms Terblanche joined the University of South Africa in 2008, she focused her attention on tuition for the first few years as this was when she started with a family. During 2011, Ms Terblanche’s current supervisor, Professor Bernadene de Clercq, sent out an invitation to academics to join a Flagship programme, the Personal Finance Research Unit (PFRU), in the college. It was as a member of this PFRU that Ms Terblanche enrolled for (2011) and successfully completed her Master’s degree in 2014. Ms Terblanche’s Master’s degree focused on the accessibility of chartered accountancy studies in South Africa. This topic in turn sparked Ms Terblanche’s interest in accounting education and the current teaching practices at South African universities related to chartered accountants. Ms Terblanche met with an academic at this stage that completed his PhD on an audit simulation at a residential university in South Africa. This immediately got Ms Terblanche’s attention but she realised that something else was needed at Unisa in terms of the volumes of students.
During 2015, Ms Terblanche was selected to be part of the Unisa Young Academics of 2015 programme. During this programme, Ms Terblanche had the opportunity to network with wonderful academics from Unisa as well as other academic institutions. Many of these academics that came to talk to the Young Academics are rated (NRF) researchers. This gave Ms Terblanche an ideal opportunity to discuss the advantages of being rated as well as having a niche area. Ms Terblanche also had the opportunity to meet many of the Unisa Academy for Applied Technology in Teaching and eLearning (AATTeL) members. These members discussed how the newest technology provided opportunities in teaching and learning. Ms Terblanche decided at this Young Academics programme that accounting education is her niche area. She also decided that she wants to be an educational technologist and put Unisa on the map in terms of the newest educational technologies.