Abstract: The existing assessment methods focus on the final exam and ignore the process assessment. For the course of strength of materials, a new evaluation system is explored, that emphasizes the process evaluation to comprehensively evaluate students' mastery of the course. That is to reduce the proportion of the final exam grade in the overall evaluation from 70% to 50% , and the after-class homework, quizzes, module tests, laboratory tests and case studies each accounts for 10% . The new assessment method pays more attention to the assessment of the students' learning process, so that the students can maintain a high degree of tension throughout the course of learning, the timeliness and the purpose of learning can be improved, and thereby, the enthusiasm of learning the course and the classroom teaching effect are improved.