Time for Reflection

I've got a bit of free time at the mo, so thought I had better revisit this subject. Just finished reading all the current member blogs and had to read up on the article reported in Dave McC
blog on Cognitive Learning Theory. Very interesting. I believe I have picked up some useful pointers about presenting my analytical subject material from it and have saved it in my delicous account.
In that report it was stated that students retain more information on problem solving by utilizing the approach of carrying out a full worked example as a class group and then getting them to solve a similar type problem by themselves without referring back to the worked example just done.
The other day, after reading Jacquie Hayes interview with Dave Bremer, I decided to go and speak with him since I didn't realize that he is teaching by distance learning and his office is just around the corner from mine. Had a good talk with Dave and he agreed that my subject is at the "hard" end of subject matter in terms of distance learning but he advised me rather than to think "how could I teach this online" to rephrase it as "if I *had* to teach this online, how could I make it more interesting for the poor distance learner?" I am also trying to speak with Peter Brook whom I believe is presenting subject matter to schools "Live" but is limited to four students at a time. I will enter a posting of this meeting when it happens.
Getting back to what Dave said about making a subject more interesting, what comes to mind is some sort of interactive component embedded within the subject content. For instance, I can imagine covering the topic on vibration analysis by having the student reading notes via word or similar programme and having a button that reads "press this to see what happens when the forcing frequency equals the natural frequency of vibration" and upon picking the button, a video starts up showing a bridge or similar structure come tumbling down since students enjoy seeing things break apart. (I know I do)
In the meantime I will surf the net and see if I can find some institution which is teaching engineering by distance or any other relative info. Bye for now.