Teaching Reform of Digital Logic in Integrated Hardware Practice

This paper addresses issues in the teaching of hardware foundation courses for Computer Science majors, such as content overlap, lack of structure, and insufficient practical experience, by proposing a reform plan centered around the Digital Logic course. The course is divided into parallel theoretical and experimental tracks. The theoretical part adopts a bidirectional structure, where content progressively builds upon previous knowledge. The focus is on explaining logical functions while omitting internal physical details. The experimental component progresses alongside the theory, with the final semester centered around a FPGA-based soft-core CPU project, integrating all computer hardware knowledge. Finally, the reform's effectiveness was validated through anonymous surveys and grade statistics, which show significant improvements in student performance in areas such as instruction systems, sequential logic, and CPU design, as well as a notable increase in students' interest, self-learning abilities, and confidence in hardware design, achieving positive teaching outcomes.