Yip,
If I remember correctly, DL does some version of this. The last time I went to recurrent, I was given a CD in advance and required to review the material and take a test at the end. The test results were transferred to a diskette you had to turn in the first day of class. I think we got one hour flight pay for this.
As G200 said, it's a bit of square filling for the routine stuff. After initially grumbling about it, I decided I preferred sitting in my jammies with a cup of coffee doing this to sitting in a classroom on Virginia Ave.
The FA's do a lot of this stuff.
If used properly ( hasn't been yet ), this is a very valuable teaching tool for seeing that everyone gets the same info, allowing the basics to be covered at your own pace. This allows the instructors to make better use of classroom time filling the gaps and saves the company a bit of $$$.
The problem from my limited exposure to the systems CD's for 727, MD88 is that there isn't sufficiently detailed info put on the CD. It's more of a kindergarden primer than a complete discussion. Considering the power of this technology, a lot more could be put on them. After all, systems are pretty cut and dried. They work like they work so the info isn't revised/updated much as procedural stuff would be ( procedural. FAR, ops specs stuff wouldn't work in this format...too many changes ). You could put just about all you expect people to know about the anatomy/physiology of the beast on a CD and let them study at home with the instructor covering what the student didn't understand from home study.
The CD should include the ability to operate systems from a panel depiction and see what happens on the panel and an accompanying schematic. Remember the old Gemco boards from DC9 school ? Putting something like that on a CD would allow you to move any switch, see the annunciation/ panel indications, and see what relays/valves moved on the schematic. A picture is worth a lot of words.
Delta was approaching this on the MD88 disc with the electrical system. More importantly, there was an FGS/FMS "free play" section where you could load a flight plan and fly it from T/O to landing, make changes just like you would in the airplane. With FMS being as "hands on" as it is, this was a great learning tool.
Well, I sure ran away from the original question, huh ? Ask me what time it is, I'll tell you how to build a clock !! Time for more coffee.