Seismic design of building structures has become an important course in the undergraduate stage of civil engineering. This course includes complicated theoretical contents and abstract concepts, which is difficult for visualizing the complex principles by the traditional teaching methods. In view of these problems, the operable teaching aids are introduced into the course to enrich the teaching methods and help students understand it. Three knowledge points, that is, seismic response analysis of single degree of freedom system, Duhamel integral, seismic response spectrum, are taken as the case of teaching aids application in the course. Based on this, the students are guided to think actively, so that the boring and difficult theory is easy to be understood. According to the feedback information of the questionnaire survey, better teaching results are achieved by teaching aids application, the learning interest of students is stimulated, the autonomous learning ability of students is enhanced, the academic performance of students is improved, and the interactive experience of classroom teaching is better.