I have worn glasses for a long time. They help me drive, read the page and the screen, see the faces of my students, and do many things I could not do without them. They have always been my assistive technology.
Recently, someone I know very well, a person with deep expertise in technology, bought a pair of AI glasses and recommended them to me. I respect this person’s expertise, and they are the one I always call when I need any kind of technology support. I listened, I was curious, and I said: not yet. I am still learning how to use AI on my laptop. There is already so much to learn in such a short time, and my eyes can wait.
Then I read an article that made me think about those glasses again, this time as a teacher.
What the article says
Thomas Corbin, Sue Sharpe and Phillip Dawson of Deakin University published “On AI glasses and wearable AI in assessment” this spring in Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education (Corbin et al., 2026). Here is what I took from it.
When generative AI arrived, many universities fell back on one boundary they believed they could still enforce: keep the student and the technology apart at the moment of assessment. The invigilated exam and the face-to-face oral became the safe place.
AI glasses, earbuds, rings and pendants weaken that boundary. Many glasses now look like ordinary eyewear. They can show text in the wearer’s line of sight, listen to a question and read the page in front of them. The authors call this dual transparency: the tool becomes part of how the wearer sees and hears the world, and an observer cannot tell when it is working.
Their most important point, for me, is what happens next. If an institution keeps trying to ban what it cannot see, it has to start inspecting students’ bodies: their glasses, hearing aids, health devices and head coverings. The authors call this bodily adjudication. They show that the burden falls hardest on students with disabilities, chronic health conditions and sensory impairments, and on students whose religious practice includes covering the head or face.
The authors do not say that standards disappear. They say we lose a shortcut: treating any AI use as wrong, and trying to enforce that by keeping the technology out of the room.
This article is not only for people who use AI. Whether or not you ever open an AI tool yourself, a student may walk into your exam wearing glasses like these, and you will not know. The questions the authors raise about fairness, accessibility and trust belong to every teacher, including my colleagues who have chosen not to use AI at all.
Why I moved away from graded quizzes
Reading the article, I recognized a decision I made some time ago. Once AI tools became part of everyday life, I stopped grading quizzes. I still offer quizzes, but they are not graded. They are a tool students use to check their own knowledge, try again and see what they still need to learn.
A graded quiz that must be protected from AI needs watching. Watching needs surveillance software, locked browsers, cameras or an invigilator scanning the room. I do not use any of these. Surveillance creates accessibility barriers for the students who already have the fewest options: a student with a slow connection, a shared device, a disability, caring responsibilities or test anxiety.
Now I can add one more reason. If a quiz can be answered through a pair of glasses that look like mine, then a quiz grade tells me very little about what a student has learned. Policing it would mean looking at my students’ faces and asking what they are wearing. That is not the relationship I want with any learner.
So where a graded quiz once stood, I now set assignments and creative writing that do not need watching. Students apply ideas to real situations, reflect on their own practice and values, and write in their own voice. The learning is visible in the work itself.
Students can still use AI in my classes. But when learning happens by doing and creating, it is much harder to let AI do the learning instead. I remind my students that a shortcut has a cost. If they skip the process, they will not know how to do the work. If they rely on technology for every task, they lose the best tool they have, themselves, and they will be less ready for the challenges the world will bring them.
Teaching AI as a tool to use ethically
My students will practise social work in a world full of AI. Their clients, agencies and communities will use it. Teaching them to hide their AI use does not prepare them for that world. Teaching them to use it openly, critically and with care does.
I am not an expert in AI. I am learning, and I use AI to support my own learning. I often question myself about how I use it. Here is what I try to do in my courses.
I tell my students how I use AI in my own teaching and writing, and I share the questions I still ask myself. We learn together.
Students may use AI to brainstorm, to understand a hard concept or to check their grammar. Then they go back to the readings and do their own thinking. When I look at their work, I do not ask whether they used AI. I ask whose thinking is in it. If the AI part were taken out, would the student’s own understanding and judgment still be there?
I ask students to say how they used AI, the same way they would cite a source, and I want them to feel safe saying it. I also ask them to check everything AI gives them, because it can invent references and repeat bias.
Some of my students, and some of my colleagues, choose not to use AI at all. I respect that choice. It does not make anyone a better or worse teacher or student. Much of what I describe here works just as well in a classroom where nobody uses AI: ungraded quizzes, creative assignments and learning by doing.
For some students, AI is assistive technology. I work in English as an additional language, so I know how much it can help to have a difficult text explained. For those students, AI is a way into the learning.
I am preparing two guides that bring these practices together: a handbook on inclusive teaching and a guide to AI ethics in social work education. I will share them when they are ready.
Design for learning, not control
I am not ready for AI in my glasses. I am still learning to use AI on my laptop, and some days it feels like too much learning in too short a time. I suspect many of my students and colleagues feel the same.
I keep asking myself whether I am using AI well. For now, my answer is simple. As long as it helps me maintain my wellness, promotes teaching and learning, and supports my students, I will keep using it, to the best of my knowledge.
But I am sure of one thing. When we stop designing assessment to control and punish, and start designing it to promote learning, our students will be better prepared for the world they are entering. They will know how to use AI ethically, how to question it and how to explain their choices. They will not be learning how to use glasses to cheat on quizzes.
I would love to hear from you. How are you rethinking assessment in your teaching? Message me, and let us keep learning together.
Love. Care. Share.
Sasha
A note on how this post was made: the ideas, stories and teaching choices here are my own, and so was the decision to write after reading the article. AI helped me format the article, organize my ideas, choose and crop my pictures, fit the post to the page and do many other tasks, so that you can read my thoughts in an accessible way. I say this openly because I ask the same openness of my students.
Reference
Corbin, T., Sharpe, S., & Dawson, P. (2026). On AI glasses and wearable AI in assessment. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 1–17. https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2026.2661367
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