17.31%
average final exam improvement, same instructors, same courses, only the method changed
A personal learning companion, a room full of peers, and a real record of progress — the three things a classroom gives that one parent, alone, can't recreate. Backed by peer-reviewed research, built so you're still in the loop every step of the way.
Maya: "I'm comparing the Industrial Revolution with the Digital Revolution because both changed who held power over information."
Ms. Rivera: "I can see you're still feeling stuck. Let's go simpler — pick one thing from class you remember anything about."
Ms. Rivera works alongside your child on every challenge — asking the questions that move their thinking forward, never handing them the answer.
Even at a table of one, your child evaluates three peer solutions of genuinely varying quality on every activity — the part that turns a solo worksheet into real reasoning.
Every course produces a Thinking Outcome — a clear, honest read of where your child's thinking sits and how far it's come. Downloadable whenever a board asks.
ThinkSmith fits into how homeschooling actually works — not around it.
If your child understands deeply when given time but freezes on a quiz — if they hate worksheets but light up when asked to reason through a problem — their kind of thinking has a place to develop and be seen here.
One dashboard for every child. Email login or a simple 4-digit PIN for younger kids — no juggling separate accounts or logins per subject.
Older students register and run their own dashboard, no parent account required, while you still see the weekly rollup of how their thinking is developing.
One shared way to see thinking growth across a group of kids working on entirely different courses — built for how homeschool communities actually operate.
This isn't a new idea — researchers have studied it for decades. ThinkSmith is the first platform built entirely around it, at the scale of one child working from home. The 17.31% exam improvement wasn't produced by better teachers or harder content. The instructors, courses, and students were the same as previous years. The only variable was this method.
Your child writes their own solution to a real academic challenge, in their own words — not multiple choice, not fill-in-the-blank.
They read three peer attempts at the same challenge and write structured feedback to each. This is where the deep learning happens — evaluating others' reasoning sharpens their own.
This is the step most platforms skip entirelyThey receive feedback on their own work and write a reflection on what changed in their thinking — the closest thing to a one-on-one teacher conference at this scale.
A synthesis across five competencies and a narrative of how their thinking developed that activity. They keep going if they want — the next activity is theirs to choose.
Plenty of tools claim to cover "any curriculum." Most quietly generate it — and get it wrong. ThinkSmith does the opposite: we find the official curriculum document for your child's grade, confirm it's the current version, and build from it — region by region. We'd rather map one region properly than claim fifty.
Prefer your own materials? Upload your child's syllabus or course outline and ThinkSmith builds activities matched to it directly — no waiting on region coverage.
Every message a child writes is screened before our AI coach is allowed to reply. If a report to a child-protection authority is ever appropriate, we disclose only a learner's name, grade, and region, and their parent's name and email — never a date of birth, address, or phone number. Learner records are held in Canada. We don't sell or share family information or show advertising.
Source: peer-reviewed pilot study, Ubon Ratchathani University — 1,742 students, 22 courses, 6 disciplines. Instructors held PhDs from international universities; instructional quality was top-tier throughout. The variable being tested was the method, not instructor quality — the mechanism is a property of how humans learn, not of any specific population.
Read the full research paper →The method behind ThinkSmith has been tested for years — 1,742 students, peer-reviewed results. This platform is new, and we're onboarding a small number of founding families directly with our team to get it right from day one.
Contact us to get started →Press play to watch the whole journey, or step through it yourself. Open in a new tab →
Every message a child writes is screened before our AI coach responds. If content indicates self-harm or serious distress:
To allow an authority to assess immediate risk and contact a parent, we share only:
We do not include a home address, date of birth, telephone number, location data or billing details in a safety report.
If a child discloses a concern involving someone in their own household, we report to the authority without contacting the family first. A system that routed every disclosure straight back to a parent account could place a child at greater risk.
When parents look for a learning approach for their children, they usually ask two questions: will this actually help my child learn better, and will it build the self-reliance they need for the future?
In 2008–2009, ThinkSmith founder Leslie Richards co-led a university pilot study involving 1,742 students across 22 courses in STEM, computer science and engineering at Ubon Ratchathani University.
The goal was simple: engage students in new knowledge before the lecture. Instead of sitting through passive hours of instruction, students used the ThinkSmith framework — active problem-solving, reviewing peer ideas, and receiving structured feedback ahead of the deep-dive discussion.
Academic improvement only happens when a learner’s mindset changes first. In a post-study survey of 684 students:
Traditional instruction asks students to sit quietly while an instructor talks, leaving the hardest part — applying the knowledge — for homework, when the learner is isolated and frustrated. The pilot inverted that with a five-stage loop:
Whether in a university lecture hall or at a homeschool kitchen table, the core finding holds: children learn far more from what they reason through themselves than from what they are told. ThinkSmith gives your child the structure, real-time coaching and feedback loop to become an independent, confident learner — supported by evidence from thousands of students.