Abstract: In response to the higher demands of the new technological revolution on students’ practical and innovative capabilities, and aiming to expand their advanced mechanical knowledge and experimental skills, this paper designs an experimental teaching program for mechanics courses based on the thermal deformation concepts of materials involved in fundamental mechanics courses such as Mechanics of Materials and Engineering Mechanics. This scheme conducts thermal deformation experiments on a metamaterial: it elucidates the thermal expansion regulation mechanism and carries out virtual experiments of numerical simulation via the finite element method; it also prepares the metamaterial using fused deposition modeling (FDM) and measures its coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) via digital image correlation (DIC), so as to verify that the metamaterial can achieve tunable CTE from positive to negative. This experimental teaching integrates virtual simulation with experimental testing, which not only cultivates students’ practical and innovative abilities, but also organically integrates scientific research with teaching, effectively improving the quality of talent cultivation in research-oriented universities.