Need to do a front-end analysis

I realized, a bit too late, that I have been making a number of assumptions about the technical skills of the audience as I designed the assignments. I think most of the assignments have reasonable technical requirements (e.g., Word, PowerPoint), so it should be fine. But, for the three Culminating Projects in particular, I was planning on requiring the integration of Web 2.0, podcasting, digital storytelling, and the like. Since this is not a learn-how-to-use-tools course, I need to make sure my expectations of tool proficiency are realistic. So, my plan is to add a technical skill survey (just a couple of questions) to the individual "welcome" emails I will send out to everyone during the first week of the course. This will help me determine how to modify the assignments so that everyone can achieve the learning objectives. I suspect I will be able to modify the projects, if need be, for flexible tool use...allowing each learner to choose from a selection.