One great challenge for engineering education is to increase the retention rate for freshman and sophomore students. In 2008, CSULA received an NSF CCLI grant to redesign the Introduction to Digital Engineering course to enhance students' interest in engineering by exposing them to fun hands-on in class projects. The proposed course redesign employs the Tablet PC-based Collaborative Project-Based Learning model (CPBL) that has been proven to be effective in our upper division computer engineering courses. This paper presents our current progress on the CCLI project. To study the impact of the CPBL model in freshman/sophomore level courses, a series of interactive in-class projects was developed that: 1) stimulate students' learning and make them more engaged in the classroom; 2) tie the theory taught in class to real-world design experience; and 3) provide a clearer insight into possible engineering careers. So far five in-class projects using Verilog HDL design, simulation, and synthesis with Xilinx FPGA boards have been developed in our course redesign effort. In this paper, we will share our practice on how to incorporate the projects into the classroom instruction to deepen the students' understanding of number systems, logic function simplification, and combinational/sequential logic design. In addition to focusing on a fundamental concept in digital design, each project progressively introduces different aspects of the design process. Preliminary assessment results are presented to show the impact of the in-class design project on student learning outcomes.
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