In my experience in a university ECE program, you'd start with understanding the high level properties of transistors, then combining transistors to make AND and OR gates, then XOR and other gates, then MUXes and half/full adders, then flip-flops and eventually into synchronous (clocked) logic.
The lab component of such coursework did start with TTL chips but the timing of the coursework was such that you'd have most of the asynchronous logic theory taught by the time the chips came out.
The lab component of such coursework did start with TTL chips but the timing of the coursework was such that you'd have most of the asynchronous logic theory taught by the time the chips came out.