To meet the growing social needs of a wide range of talents, contemporary university education is required to train students with characteristics of thick-foundation, wide-caliber, high-capacity and high-quality, which is a challenge to the existing teaching model. This paper analyzed relevant courses' teaching models in domestic and foreign countries, as a basis for the implementation of a teaching mode in the process of soil mechanics teaching reform, in which students are the center, while teachers play the heuristic and guiding role. By combining soil mechanics theory with engineering practice, studying and using demonstration test in classroom, increasing teaching methods, improving the quality evaluation and examination system and so on, this research tried to practice the reform in soil mechanics teaching and the teaching effect was significantly improved.