Abstract: It is an important teaching task and goal in China’s colleges and universities to cultivate and improve students’ autonomous learning and thinking ability. In addition to theory teaching, experiment teaching is also an important way and method to achieve this teaching goal. With example of experiment teaching in course of marine environmental monitoring, this pater discussed the teaching design in experiment items, teaching process, teaching mode and examination method in limited time. This aimed to enhance students’ interest, enthusiasm and competitiveness, cultivate students’ abilities to discover problem, analyze and solve the problem, and improve their experimental techniques and autonomous learning and thinking abilities.