Opinion
Australian universities have become surprisingly good at writing rules about smart glasses: provided the person wearing them is sitting an exam.
ANU lists smart glasses as prohibited electronic devices. RMIT says they cannot be worn inside an exam venue. Adelaide University tells students to remove and store them. There is no requirement for students to read three policies and interpret whether an AI-enabled camera embedded in eyewear counts as an electronic communication device. Universities simply name the thing.
Move the same glasses into a lecture theatre, library, laboratory or student accommodation, however, and things become considerably less straightforward. This is where smart glasses expose a much larger higher-education problem: our policies are frequently comprehensive at the level of principle and unclear at the point of use. Consider the two competing risks.
First, smart glasses can be assistive technology. UTS researchers have developed approaches using smart glasses and spatial audio to assist blind and low-vision people with identifying objects. Monash is investigating AI-enabled glasses designed to help people with cerebral visual impairment better understand their surroundings.
A blanket campus prohibition would therefore be poor policy. It risks treating people with a disability, such as vision loss or hearing differences as suspicious for using technology that can increase independence and participation.
But the second risk is equally real. Camera-enabled glasses allow recording with far fewer visible cues than holding up a phone. Australia's eSafety Commissioner now explicitly discusses smart glasses in relation to covert recording, gender-based violence and non-consensual recording. University of Sydney researchers are examining their use in gendered harassment, including men secretly recording women and distributing the resulting content online.
Universities should be capable of holding both realities at once. What we currently tend to do instead is distribute the answer across multiple institutional domains. Accessibility sits over here. Privacy sits somewhere else. Recording might be addressed in student conduct.
Technology-facilitated abuse appears in a gender-based violence framework. A lecturer facing the actual device must then assemble the institutional position themselves. That is not good policy implementation.
Notably, the risks created by these devices are not confined to gender-based abuse. The same capabilities could be used for covert surveillance of council meetings, bullying of staff, intimidation of peers, research espionage or other forms of non-consensual monitoring. All of which could include general conduct without a gender-based motivation.
However, gender-based violence is an area in which universities now face particularly explicit obligations. The regulatory guidance for the National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence expressly identifies technology-facilitated abuse as a form of gender-based violence, and the Code requires providers to prevent and respond to harm, mitigate risk and monitor and report on outcomes. The sector therefore does not need another 40-page policy explaining that inappropriate recording is inappropriate. It needs translation.
So, what can we do? A university should be able to tell its community, in ordinary language, that smart glasses can be legitimate assistive technologies and that their use should not automatically attract suspicion. It should simultaneously state that the same devices must not be used for covert recording, monitoring or harassment, and explain how consent and privacy expectations operate in teaching and campus environments.
And…it should also tell staff what to do. Can a lecturer ask whether a device is recording? What happens if a student is using smart glasses under an accessibility arrangement? Where should concerns about covert recording be reported? Does the answer change in a laboratory, counselling service, change room, clinical placement or classroom? These are operational questions, not philosophical ones, but they are largely absent from clear dissemination strategies.
So let’s celebrate this complexity as an argument for better policy, not for silence.
When protecting an examination, universities have shown they can recognise smart glasses, name them and explain what people must do. The next step is to demonstrate the same institutional competence outside the exam room.
Associate Professor Janine Arantes, Dr Bec Marland and Dr Andrew Welsman are all from Victoria University.