For decades, research has shown that mistakes aren’t roadblocks — they’re stepping stones. When students have the chance to reflect on errors, explain misconceptions, and hear peers’ reasoning, they develop deeper conceptual understanding, stronger persistence, and greater confidence in tackling new challenges.
Yet despite the evidence, classrooms still lack scalable ways to bring the “science of learning from mistakes” into everyday practice.
Turning Research into Practice
RightOn Education, a 2022 Tools Competition winner, was founded to change that. The team set out to build a platform that centers teachers, saves time, and makes error-based teaching easier to implement, while helping students see mistakes as opportunities for growth.
Guided by learning engineering principles, RightOn has collaborated with educators and students in historically under-resourced schools to co-design tools that:
- Reduce time pressure and math anxiety
- Surface student thinking in real time
- Create space for productive struggle and peer discussion
- Build math self-efficacy, belonging, and growth mindsets alongside content mastery
Each feature is designed not only to improve learning outcomes, but also to generate insights about how learning happens: Which misconceptions are most persistent? What kinds of wrong answers spark the richest peer dialogue? How does conversation about errors shift students’ sense of belonging in math class?
Their work has already garnered national attention, including in a feature on NBC News.
Catalyzed by the Tools Competition
Support from the Learning Engineering Tools Competition helped transform RightOn! from prototypes into polished, classroom-ready tools. With competition funding, the team:
- Moved from beta versions to a robust, scalable suite of apps
- Partnered with researchers to structure learning data for analysis and public use
- Piloted rapid-cycle prototypes to explore design questions on timing, scaffolding, and error-based prompts
- Shared findings back with the field to strengthen the collective evidence base
This approach exemplifies the Tools Competition’s mission: to accelerate tools that not only work for students today but also build lasting knowledge for the field.
Introducing RightOn! 1.0
That work culminated in the recent launch of RightOn! 1.0, now used in classrooms and after-school programs to make “talking about mistakes” a daily practice rather than an exception.
RightOn! 1.0 equips teachers with:
- Dashboards – help teachers quickly spot patterns in student thinking and adjust instruction in real time.
- Confidence Meter – prompts students to reflect on their certainty and gives teachers insight into self-efficacy and learning patterns.
- Surfacing Student Thinking – uses AI to group student-generated hints into themes and guide classroom discussion.
- Web-based access – runs in any browser with no downloads, enabling easy implementation in diverse classrooms.
By making error-based learning simple and actionable, RightOn! 1.0 is helping students build confidence and deeper conceptual understanding while giving teachers new ways to unlock rich classroom dialogue.
The Next Horizon: Human-in-the-Loop AI
As AI reshapes education, RightOn is exploring ways to embed human-in-the-loop AI systems into its platform to further scale the benefits of error-based learning, while keeping teachers at the center. Future work includes developing tools that can:
- Generate plausible wrong answers based on real student misconceptions for teachers to use in class discussion
- Adapt scaffolds and explanations while keeping teachers in control
- Ensure responsible, transparent use of data that prioritizes student safety and equity
By embedding AI into a research-driven, educator-centered process, RightOn is showing how advanced technology can support—not replace—the human judgment and care that make classrooms work.
Why It Matters
RightOn’s journey embodies what the Tools Competition was designed to spark: tools that are not only effective, but also evidence-driven, inclusive, and future-ready. By combining decades of cognitive science with real classroom insights and cutting-edge technology, they are helping redefine what math learning can look like.
👉 Explore RightOn! 1.0 and join the team in reimagining math — one mistake at a time!
