Split flowcharts in teaching digital system design

Teaching design of digital systems is usually based on one of two main paradigms, namely either declarative-based on a functional description of system; or procedural-based on constructing a flow chart (algorithm) defining a sequence of steps of the system's operation. The paper proposes an integrative approach for digital systems description and digital systems design teaching, both for computer engineering and electrical engineering students. This approach combines together the main aspects of the above two paradigms. The central concept of the new approach is a split flowchart. The proposed approach enables a parallel representation of the description of digital system functional fragments that in turn can be described procedurally. This paper reports results of testing the effect of different paradigms on the design process and on its results, and especially the efficiency of the proposed approach in comparison with others. Additionally, a case study of teaching an introductory digital design course based on the proposed approach is presented.