荔枝视频

The rise of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) has marked a seismic shift in academia, which finds itself wrestling with a 鈥減ost-plagiarism鈥� reality.

This challenge will be a focus of the U荔枝视频 , April 28-30 at the , featuring , a professor in the , as one of the keynote speakers.

Eaton, MA鈥�97, PhD鈥�09, brings more than three decades of teaching and research experience to the GenAI conversation, along with a deep commitment to reframing academic integrity as an educational, rather than punitive, practice.

In her keynote, "Postplagiarism: Ethical, Equitable, and Inclusive Learning Futures," Eaton will invite educators to look beyond detection鈥慴ased approaches to plagiarism and instead consider integrity as a shared, values鈥慸riven responsibility grounded in ethics, equity and human dignity. 

Ahead of her keynote, Eaton takes a moment to reflect on her research journey and gives a preview of what conference attendees can expect from her presentation.

How would you describe your keynote topic to someone who doesn鈥檛 know anything about your work/research focus?

My keynote is about post-plagiarism, which is a framework for understanding educational integrity in an era when technology and education can no longer be separated. For over 500 years, our ideas about plagiarism were shaped by the printing press and later by the internet. Now, generative AI is fundamentally changing how we write, research, and create knowledge. I argue that instead of clinging to outdated definitions of plagiarism or doubling down on detection, we need to reframe integrity as a shared responsibility grounded in ethics, equity, and human dignity. 

I want to help educators see that this moment is not just a disruption, but rather an opportunity to build more ethical, equitable, and inclusive learning futures.

What made you want to lead research related to academic integrity and GenAI? 

Eaton: My path into academic integrity research was anything but linear. I am a humanist by training. I hold a Master of Arts in Spanish from the 荔枝视频 and spent 15 years as a language teacher. I started teaching Spanish to university students in the mid 1990s, and that experience of working closely with students shaped how I think about learning, ethics, and responsibility. 

When I moved into the Werklund School of Education for my PhD, I became increasingly interested in how institutions define and respond to academic misconduct. I noticed that our approaches were often punitive and rarely educational. Around 2018, I co-founded (the journal) Canadian Perspectives on Academic Integrity and began leading research teams that examined misconduct policies across Canada. Then ChatGPT arrived in late 2022 and everything accelerated. 

I had already been thinking about the future of plagiarism in my 2021 book, Plagiarism in Higher Education: Tackling Tough Topics in Academic Integrity, where I introduced the concept of post-plagiarism. When generative AI became mainstream, those ideas suddenly felt urgent.

The theme of the conference centres around digital transformation. Tell us how the research you lead provides context to shifts we鈥檙e observing in post-secondary education.

The conference theme, From Disruption to Connection, resonates deeply with my research. My post-plagiarism framework is fundamentally about making this shift, moving from a disruption mindset (panic about AI, surveillance, detection) toward connection (shared responsibility, ethical engagement and inclusive learning). My research provides context to the digital transformation happening in post-secondary education in several ways. First, my collaborators and I have spent years analyzing academic misconduct policies across Canadian institutions, revealing that most approaches are still rooted in punitive models rather than educational or restorative ones. Second, my work on epistemic pluralism argues that we need to value diverse ways of knowing, being, and doing, including Indigenous and decolonized perspectives, as we rethink integrity in a technology-rich world. Third, the post-plagiarism framework itself gives educators a vocabulary for understanding how hybrid human-AI collaboration is becoming the norm and what that means for assessment, authorship and trust.

What are you currently observing as the biggest transformation in post-secondary related to generative AI and assessment?

The biggest transformation I am observing is a wicked problem about what we should be assessing in the first place. 

In a recent study, our team interviewed 28 Canadian higher-education educators, and one of the most striking questions a participant asked was: 鈥淲hat should we be assessing exactly?鈥� That question captures the shift beautifully. When students have access to powerful AI tools, the old model of assessing whether someone can produce a polished essay on their own no longer holds. Educators are beginning to move away from product-based assessments toward process-based ones that value critical thinking, ethical reasoning and metacognition. 

At the same time, there is a growing recognition that AI -detection tools are unreliable and can cause real harm, especially for multilingual students. The biggest transformation, then, is not technological, but rather, philosophical. We are being compelled to ask deeper questions about the purpose of assessment and what it means for students to demonstrate learning with integrity.

What can conference attendees expect from your keynote address?

Attendees can expect a thought-provoking and hopeful presentation. I will share my award-winning postplagiarism framework. 

Participants will hear about the latest research from around the world, including findings from studies our team has conducted with Canadian educators and students. But this is not just a research talk. I want people to leave the room thinking differently about what integrity means in their own classrooms and institutions. 

My goal is for attendees to feel inspired and equipped to cultivate learning environments where integrity emerges from engagement, not enforcement. Expect big ideas, grounded in evidence, delivered with hope.