Judith Thomas is the Director of Faculty Programs at the University of Virginia Library, charged with strengthening support for research, teaching, and scholarship by developing and implementing programs that promote faculty engagement with the library. A recent addition to her portfolio is that of leadership of our OER efforts, creating strategies and programs that foster the use of open educational resources at the University of Virginia.
Judith has a long history of public service administration at the University of Virginia Library, with a special concentration in media. She also has extensive experience supporting innovative uses of educational technology to further the teaching and learning aims of our faculty and students.
Judith’s capstone project will investigate the data-capturing methods and purposes of a new generation of digital products offered by textbook publishers, with a focus on that provided as part of “inclusive access” deals. Many of these products are governed by licenses that capture data about student and faculty identity and behavior; the data is used in ways that are not clear to either the institution or to the users. The outcome of this capstone will be a report on the kinds and terms of agreements that institutions, students, and faculty agree to when they use publisher-provided educational content.
