With the rapid development and transformation of China’s construction industry, the education system is also facing new challenges. The Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, in collaboration with the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, has issued a document emphasising the advancement of industrialisation, digitalisation, and intelligent development in the construction sector. This not only provides direction for the industry but also sets new requirements for the education system to cultivate professionals who meet the demands of the new era. As a core course in civil engineering, principles of concrete structure design has highlighted several issues under traditional teaching models: outdated textbooks that are disconnected from industry practices, insufficient online resources to meet diverse learning needs, limited classroom interaction and inadequate teacher-student communication, heavy computational workloads that burden students, and unscientific evaluation system that fails to accurately measure learning outcomes. Therefore, course reform is imperative. Key measures include developing new digital textbooks, building diverse digital resource libraries, establishing digital platforms centred on classroom teaching, creating information-based teaching environments, and adopting a multi-dimensional, quantifiable evaluation system. The reform particularly focuses on enhancing student engagement and practical application skills through new digital textbooks, diverse digital resources, and technologies such as BIM, Matlab, and Digital Image Correlation (DIC). These changes have improved student participation and learning outcomes, fostered the ability to solve complex engineering problems, and laid the foundation for cultivating versatile professionals suited to the needs of the new era.