I mentioned schematic capture in your previous thread, and I just want
to clarify that in no way is it a substitute for an HDL. But what it
does allow you to do is to bridge the gap between fundamental
knowledge of gates and more complex logic. The idea is that you can
introduce a latch as a series of gates with feedback, then they can
draw it in schematic capture, simulate it and see that, for example,
that series of gates holds the input value when the enable is held
low.

From there it's a pretty quick step to HDL and any arbitrary design.
The thing to stress is to make sure your students can relate their HDL
back to fundamental elements (muxes, flip flops, decoders, etc.). We
do this by making the students draw out a diagram of how they expect
their HDL to be synthesized into fundamental building blocks as part
of their lab assignments.

Chris