It's possible that the distance-learning label is a red herring. To me, most of the real learning that happens doesn't happen in the social situation. That's only where you find out about things. Real learning happens when you go off and exercise these new little modules that you're trying to build to comprehend ideas that you haven't been able to deal with before. You're, more or less, off by yourself.
Computers can help because they work as something stronger than a book.
These three volumes are some of the greatest for learning about physics. You can do quite a bit by looking at the videotapes and then going off with a book and pondering them. Add the computer to the video and the books and you would have something where you could perform the physics experiments, explore the math, and so forth. My cousins grew up on that boat in the '40s and '50s. Their schooling through the end of high school was Calvert Correspondence.