Based on the thinking of GIS course teaching reform for urban and rural planning major in the era of big data, combined with the exploration of collaborative teaching reform of GIS courses and urban planning and design related courses in the School of Architecture of South China University of Technology for more than ten years, relevant teaching experience and teaching reform achievements are systematically sorted out through introducing the teaching reform practice of frontier trends, collaborative teaching of professional courses, interactive teaching practice and innovative comprehensive experiment, and implementation path of GIS teaching reform to improve students’ innovation ability is explored. The teaching practice shows that relevant teaching reform measures have a good effect on improving the innovation ability of students majoring in architecture and the cultivation of innovative compound talents.