In this article, Gengyan Tang reflects on a recent lecture titled “A Transformative Model for Learning Academic Integrity in the Postplagiarism Era,” delivered by Bibek Dahal, a PhD candidate at the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary.
The large-scale deployment of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has made public discourse increasingly polarized. Such technological moral panic has appeared in every era in which a new medium has emerged. For example, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, people worried that novels depicting romantic love would lead women to imitate the romances in fiction, challenge social norms, and even escape their domestic roles. As a result, novels were described as “obscene and silly,” novelists were considered vulgar, and novel readers were labeled as lazy; even circulating libraries were referred to as “gin-shops”.
These examples are mentioned to introduce a point I wish to make: the emergence of any new medium involves a transitional period. This transitional period may be very long, and it may also be accompanied by transformations (the nature of which I cannot predict). This perspective emerged for me while attending a talk by Bibek Dahal in the Postplagiarism Speaker Series.
In his presentation, he introduced certain aspect of his doctoral project. By examining how international doctoral students experience academic integrity through their transition into Canadian universities, he proposed an engaging concept—creative communication. In his view, communication in the Postplagiarism era faces the pressing reality of one-size-fits-all approaches. Creative communication, however, may offer alternative possibilities. As he suggests, the use of AI would help in communicating academic integrity expectations through multi-model, creative approaches: designing conversational AI tutoring, developing personalized learning modules, and designing cultural context comparison tools.
For my perspective, the concept of creative communication in Postplagiarism era can become one of the tools to bridge the currently polarized discussions. If we examine the present moment, we can see that it is not only international students who are experiencing a transition; the entire academic community, and even society as a whole, is undergoing a transition due to GenAI. Anxiety and concerns are pushing our views of this technology toward increasing polarization (for example, mutually labelling each other). At such a moment, communicative rationality appears extraordinarily valuable.
The scholar who proposed the concept of “communicative rationality,” Jürgen Habermas, has just passed away. Yet his ideas still deserve reflection in today’s public discourse. In discussing the challenges of communicative rationality in contemporary digital environments, Maria Bakardjieva, Chair of the Department of Communication and Media Studies at the University of Calgary, observes that “agonistic self-expression flourishes, but the chances of reaching an understanding and agreement with the Other do not follow suit”. Therefore, during this transitional period, we may need to consider more seriously how to create a rational environment to debate on issues such as GenAI, academic integrity, and research integrity. This is not only extremely important for international students (whose participation can deepen mutual understanding), but also meaningful for the entire higher education system (by conveying a more rational voice to society).
Mr. Dahal’s presentation prompts us to think about how creative forms of communication (in my view, this is one form of promoting communicative rationality) can better help us reach consensus with students, and even within the academic community itself, in a GenAI-augmented world. Although his concept is not yet fully clarified, nor does it currently provide a complete set of actionable strategies, as his doctoral project progresses, I believe this idea may become more fully developed and demonstrate considerable potential.
_______________
About the author: Gengyan Tang is a PhD candidate at the Werklund School of Education at the University of Calgary. His research focuses on the digital platformization of higher education and how institutional logics shape research integrity.
Share this post: Creative Communication for Academic Integrity in Postplagiarism Era – https://postplagiarism.com/2026/04/27/creative-communication-for-academic-integrity-in-postplagiarism-era/
Postplagiarism 
Leave a comment