The Purpose
The Untied States Distance Learning Association (USDLA – www.usdla.org) celebrated its first annual National Distance Learning Week (NDLW – www.ndlw.org) with productive ideas for distance learning and the use of technology to facilitate learning. Maintaining the theme and spirit of the week-long event, NDLW used a new technology to allow easy access to information and also pushed small knowledge pieces to the participants through a product called HALO (Highly Accessible Learning Objects). HALO is a product designed and developed by the digital education company Emantras.

About HALO
HALO is based on the ubiquitous “widget” platform which drives information and learning to the client desktop. The value of any learning or training program is the accessibility of knowledge and enabling clients to receive and participate without having to leave their desktop, allowing increased accessibility. HALO incorporates new modalities of enablement making education available agnostic to geographic boundaries.

Emantras delivers learning to the “desktop” with its revolutionary HALO platform.  SCORM/AICC and learning strategies allow easy accessibility to knowledge, thereby enhancing performance.  HALO incorporates the same principle by literally creating a direct pathway between the learner and the knowledge source.  You may have heard of “widgets”, now experience the HALO effect using widget technology.

The Process
HALO was introduced and implemented at the National Distance Learning week program sponsored by USDLA. All registered members were given the opportunity to download HALO free of cost. HALO turned out to be a real success, providing an ideal platform for USDLA to share announcements, event schedules, articles, surveys and SCORM content. Participants and members had direct and easy access to all pre-conference and post-conference materials that were readily made available at their desktop.

HALO comes with a comprehensive administration module that allowed the USDLA to select and deploy content of various formats, thus enabling them to measure the success and effectiveness of the event during various sessions held through out National Distance Learning Week. In addition, the open APIs allowed integration into legacy infrastructure for enterprises that want to administer from a singular location. While HALO has been designed to meet most online learning and training needs, it was further customized based on specific requirements and needs identified by USDLA to increase the effectiveness of using HALO during NDLW.