AI as a full-time employee, not an auxiliary service

Ukrainian distance education is increasingly relying on automation, and the online school ThinkGlobal claims to be the first in the country where artificial intelligence is employed as a full-time staff member rather than as an auxiliary service. ThinkGlobal is a licensed educational institution for grades 1–11 and one of the leading distance schools in Ukraine; according to the school, its graduates successfully pass the NMT (National Multi-subject Test) and gain admission to Ukrainian and foreign universities. Each AI agent, the school emphasizes, was developed in-house for a specific area of work rather than purchased as a universal tool.

Each agent in its own role

The point of the rollout, by the school's logic, is not the number of agents working, but that each occupies a distinct position and is accountable for results in its own area. For a family, this is described as meaning a response within minutes instead of waiting until the next business day, checking of every lesson rather than a selective sample, and the ability at any moment to switch to a live human: the agent hands the conversation over. In this way, automation is positioned as an extension of responsibility, not as shifting it onto an algorithm.

First line: an AI consultant with an animated avatar

The first line of communication is handled by an AI consultant with an animated avatar. The conversation with it, according to the school's description, takes place in a format close to a video call: the agent responds by voice, holds pauses, and reacts to the interlocutor's facial expressions. This solution is aimed at lowering the barrier of first contact for parents and students, for whom it feels more natural to 'talk to someone' than to exchange messages in a chat.

Lesson recording analysis by a dedicated agent

A separate agent reviews lesson recordings: it checks whether each student was engaged in the dialogue, whether a question about homework was asked, and whether there are any signs of bullying. Detected deviations, as stated, remain open until the teacher corrects them. Thus the algorithm performs the function of continuous quality control, not a final report.

Boundaries of authority and the unchanged role of the teacher

As a next step, the school announces AI teachers with video and voice, but strictly as an additional option, not a replacement for live lessons. The main principle remains unchanged: the lesson is led by a teacher, and the decision about a child is made by a human. How all roles are structured and where the boundaries of the agents' authority lie is described by the school in a separate 'AI Team' section. In addition to the main formats, the school offers extracurricular directions; the schedule of all groups is published even before registration, and the cost is calculated both monthly and per individual live lesson.

What the family sees

Grades, attendance, and account status are visible to parents in the free ThinkGlobal Parent App for iPhone and Android. The industry, by observation, is gradually moving from the general phrase about 'using AI' to specifics that can be verified: exactly which processes are automated, who is accountable for the result, and what the family sees. An additional advantage of the distance format is that every lesson remains on recording, which can be reviewed rather than reconstructed from memory.

Contradictory data

Publications about the rollout contain a discrepancy over exactly how many parameters the lesson-analysis algorithm checks. Thus, in an Obozrevatel article the algorithm is described as checking two parameters, whereas in the school's own description several control points are listed — student engagement in the dialogue, the asking of a homework question, and signs of bullying. Both versions agree on the main point: the analysis of recordings is carried out automatically, while correcting the detected deviations remains the teacher's responsibility. The difference is likely due to the parameters being grouped in one case and listed individually in the other; the final, precise specification of the algorithm is disclosed by the school in the 'AI Team' section.