In view of the present situation and development prospect of engineering education, the teaching reform of the basic course of material engineering was carried out. The teaching content is closely combined with the engineering practice, which is divided into classroom content, after class content and extracurricular content. Three teaching methods are adopted, namely, teachers' teaching, students' teaching and joint discussion between teachers and students. Adopt multiple assessment methods to improve the proportion of usual performance. The teaching reform improves the subjective initiative of students, cultivates the ability of applying basic theory to analyze and solve practical engineering problems, and achieves good teaching effect.