#AssemblrEDUStories: How a Non-Formal Educator Used AR to Take Home a Teaching Award

Not every great classroom story comes from a conventional school. Tiara Annisa Novianti is a tutor at SPNF SKB Kabupaten Banjar, a non-formal education institution in South Kalimantan, where she teaches Social Studies and Geography across Paket A, B, and C equivalency levels. Her class of roughly 200 learners spans every age group imaginable, from school-age kids to senior citizens, which means creativity isn't optional. It's a requirement.

From TikTok FYP to the Classroom

Tiara first came across Assemblr EDU in 2024, but what brought her back was a TikTok video announcing two things that caught her attention: Assemblr EDU's new integration with Belajar.id, and the addition of AI-powered 3D content creation tools. She introduced the platform to her learners shortly after, and the response was immediate. They described it as a brand-new, highly interactive experience. Watching them engage with AR content in real time only deepened her conviction that it belonged in equivalency education.

An AR Project That Won a Competition

When Tiara entered the Gebyar Pendidikan Kesetaraan competition hosted by the Banjar District Education Office, themed around digitalization in learning, she chose Volcanism as her subject. The reasoning was deliberate: geological processes are notoriously hard to visualize through text alone, but AR could bring eruption patterns and magma structures into full 3D, right in front of her learners.

She built the project using Assemblr EDU, presented her best-practice paper on April 17, 2026, and walked away with 3rd Place on the same day results were announced.

The feature she credits most is our barcode-based AR access that has no app download required, just scan and the visualization appears. For a classroom with wildly varying levels of tech familiarity, that frictionless entry point made all the difference.

‍What the Win Really Meant

"It was a mix of happiness and being moved," Tiara shares. "What made me happiest wasn't just the award itself, it was realizing that what I was doing for my learners had value, and was worth sharing with other educators."

Her advice for educators considering the same path is refreshingly grounded: start with the topic that's hardest to explain the conventional way, because that's where AR will land hardest. Don't wait to be perfect. And if you ever enter a competition, lead with what you genuinely practice in the field, that honesty, she says, is what speaks loudest to the judges.

"The best innovation isn't born from pressure, it's born from love for education."

Inspired by Tiara's story? Explore how Assemblr EDU can transform your classroom, formal, non-formal, or anywhere in between.