Agreed. Something I find also poorly executed the majority of the time. When I teach this I try to get the student to have some sort of plan of action to attack it with but emphasise the fact that nothing comes at the expense at maintaining best glide speed.
Something that was shown to me when I went through my initial FIC with a chap called Pat Plunkett was if you get an engine failure less than 1000 ft agl treat it as if it were an EFATO. If your approx 2000 ft agl turn downwind immediately and now look for landing site either left or right of you. 3000 ft turn crosswind and 4000 ft upwind and so on. The idea being you can now treat it like a compressed circuit.
Something else I find often is people are often in a hurry to extend flaps very early and often above 1500 agl. I'm not sure where this comes from, unless of course your simulating something like a fire and want to expedite the descent.
Selection of fields is something I always try and have a 10 minute discussion on over a cup of tea. For sure if the real thing happens you may not have time to locate the perfect field but having had some pre thought about it should help. For example, how to look for a field with reasonaable short grass, I.e. Look at the colours, deep green is an indication of high growth, maybe avoid this unless there's nothing else!
This is also a great exercise to bring in Threat and Error Manangement. Threats when training, carb icing potentially, manage this using engine warms. When warming the engine use full power (pitch up and prevent yaw with rudder) so you don't alter your IAS from the glide speed.
I'm sure there's much more but I suppose as long as they make a safe attempt to land away from an airfield then that's the most important thing!
Jim.