Penn State professors find teaching limits in Meta smart-glasses trial

Making teaching videos through a pair of glasses sounds straightforward. Reading text reliably is proving harder for one Penn State professor. In interviews published November 11 by The Daily Collegian, faculty testing Meta’s AI glasses described useful first-person recording, practical teaching limits and concerns about capturing people nearby without compromising their privacy.

Those experiences come from an ongoing university evaluation, not a new Meta launch. Penn State delivered second-generation Ray-Ban Meta Wayfarer glasses to 21 professors in June, according to Amy Kuntz, its faculty engagement and learning design supervisor. Participants work at University Park and several Commonwealth campuses, and received the devices through the 2026–2027 Faculty Engagement Award.

University Libraries’ Teaching and Learning with Technology department runs the program. Its stated goals include improving accessibility, supporting learning through experience and extending instruction beyond conventional classrooms. Kuntz said the purchase was primarily funded through Penn State’s Education and General Budget, describing it as an investment in exploring technology for teaching.

A teaching camera, but an unreliable reader

Michelle Kaschak, an associate teaching professor of English at Penn State Lehigh Valley, applied with specific online-course tutorials in mind. She wanted to demonstrate library searches and navigating the American Psychological Association’s website for citation help. She also wanted to read text files and assess whether the accessibility functions lived up to Meta’s advertising.

Her testing exposed obstacles: Kaschak said the glasses could record only up to two minutes of video, and the AI made things up when reading text. Those are her reported experiences, rather than results from a controlled performance study. She has not found the glasses ideal for teaching.

Kaschak still sees possible accessibility uses for students with vision or hearing loss, and for students who learn better through audio. Cecil Shelton, an assistant teaching professor of statistics, has found a more immediate application: recording videos from his own viewpoint for teaching assistants in his STAT 200 classes.

Tiffany Petricini, an associate teaching professor of communication at Penn State Behrend, wanted help making small changes to course material while teaching. She said the glasses have not worked effectively for that purpose. They have, however, given her a way to discuss AI ethics and privacy with students.

They're just not there yet which is partly, I think, why it was good to have this program to see how they could be useful.

Michelle Kaschak, speaking to The Daily Collegian

Keeping other people out of the recording

Shelton takes precautions to avoid recording bystanders, including reserving campus spaces so he can work without others nearby. He recognizes the privacy concerns, but argues that phones also let people record others without their knowledge—and without a recording indicator.

Kuntz said the glasses went through university approval channels before purchase. Faculty received orientation and training for teaching uses and were expected to follow applicable university policies. Penn State’s AD40 policy provides guidance for students and faculty recording in classes, including with smart glasses.

A proposal to let students borrow them

Petricini wants Penn State to make the glasses available to students, much as it lends other technology. Her student-access proposal includes possible prerequisites, such as the university’s AI Essentials course, and a code of conduct for respectful use. That is a faculty recommendation, not an announced student lending program.

Her argument is not that the technology is harmless. Petricini said teaching should help students understand both the harms and benefits of technologies already used in the world. She also suggested that AI glasses are drawing attention to privacy problems that existed before wearables, including those posed by phones.