As structural design methods based on reliability theory develop rapidly, reliability theory has become an important knowledge for civil engineering students. Because the reliability theory seems to be abstract and complex due to the numerical algorithms involved, learning reliability theory has been a challenging task for students. In this paper, a teaching method based on visualization of computation is described, which is developed through the commonly available software EXCEL. With such a teaching method, different reliability algorithms which involve heavy numerical computations are implemented in EXCEL, where the intermediate results can be displayed explicitly and the programming requirements can be eliminated. As such, students can focus more on the concept and principles of the reliability theory, other than the tedious calculation details. The method of visualization of computation can significantly shorten the process of the learning for students, enhance the efficiency of learning, and improve the effectiveness of teaching. It provides a powerful tool for teaching reliability theory for civil engineering students, which has been considered challenging in the field.