EduGlu Sandbox

I’m currently teaching a Unit called “Educational Computing” (warning: server often slow/down)
The current unit looks at how to design & create what’s essentially a learning object – for something that is fairly fact based – things like GCSE revision are common choices. The software the students create (currently using Flash or HTML) is designed to be used by a single user, and tends to be pretty traditional (in no small part, that’s due to the fact I tell them they have to identify how you’d both teach and assess someone online).
They also have a group research project, looking at recent developments in eLearning, so, research into Mobile Learning / SecondLife for teaching etc.
The unit was created several years ago, when most students were enthusiastic programmers. Now we’ve got far more who are on a range of degree schemes, many of whom aren’t keen programmers. (Not to mention the fact that Flash has a much greater learning curve than Authorware).
However, I want to radically rethink the unit! I want to make it more community based, but still recognising that there are some subjects for which a fairly traditional approach works well – the drill / practice tools that are easy to build – and useful if you’re trying to learn your tables etc!
I’ve had a few ideas and have also been talking to one of our online developers; so my current plans are:

• Maintain the overview of how people learn, including (among things) that some things need lots of repetition and essentially have a “right” answer, while others lend themselves far more to discourse and don’t have a right answer.
• Get students to find & evaluate a range of different types of online learning resources – for different subjects / ages / etc.
• Develop a community of online course developers through a range of Web2.0 tools – I’ll suggest some – whatever happens to be current next October, and get them to find others. [Get them to develop their own PLE?]
• Have a set of real life projects by asking round the Uni / friends who happen to be teachers. e.g.
  • 1st year history undergraduates studying pre-Industrial communities
  • Newly qualified nurses wanting to develop professional links with their peers
  • A class of primary children studying their local area in Geography
• Get them to create a website / set of resources to suit the above. Not quite sure at this stage, how much I’d want them to actually *create* material, and how much to evaluate existing resources & draw them in to form a coherent whole ..
• And then some form of group research project – perhaps getting them to use CiteULike etc., more than I currently do; … not sure

Any suggestions?
It’s going to have to be something that I can set up in our VLE (WebCT Vista), and a certain amount of my teaching material will have to be there – however, there’s nothing to stop me having lots of links out!
I have to work out how to have the balance between discourse happening within the VLE (as that’s where it’s meant to) and that outside (issues of services ceasing / students not wanting to set up yet another account being balanced against the real world that’s out there.)