As a student of physics, economics, and business I must say, sadly, that such "simulated learning environments" have by and large failed to materialize in higher ed. I suspect that savvy textbook publishers (Inkling?) will begin to offer these kinds of things in the next generation of electronic learning materials. There's really no excuse at this point.

Duolingo is a step in the right direction it seems (though language learning is not "higher ed", it can be used by adults).

“Bicycle for the mind” analogy is actually quite old. Steve mentioned it circa 1980 after he acquired the development of the first Macintosh.

He also mentioned it again in an interview for Entrepreneurs while starting NeXT and later in the introduction of NeXTStep.

The actual content starts here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kalMB8jDnY&t=1m10s