I've found that using material that the student should have learned in their previous subject provides some great insight. First, it shows the relavency of what they have learned and how it applies directly to the new material. It also provides the "pre-test" recommendation by seeing how well they understood the pevious material or see if they have learned how to use the material. One recent example was the use of a simple resistor/capacitor network to make a delay timer. We needed a delay timer for an access delay however, we had no delay timers available for the class. We made it an in-class assignment and got the opportunity to show how a RC ciruit can be used in the real world to solve a real world problem that they will encounter often. If also demonstrated their ability regarding the circuits course they recently completed. It provided a good basis for the level of training that I needed to start with. I quickly learned that Eisnstein's relativity theory was not the place to start; but, rather an understanding of energy was more appropriate (just an outlandish example in this case). But, the idea is the same. Comments?