Through the “Course Design for Water Treatment”,in the first semester of senior year,the procedure of combining professional practice with the design was developed and implemented to meet the requirements of overall design process.Students were required to communicate with lab managers(customers),constructors,and material suppliers.Their communications were quite different from traditional student-teacher exchanges.In addition,the design must be carried out under restrictive conditions,i.e.,resource constraints:supply of materials,simplicity of construction,the limited budget for raw materials and labor,and time limit of project design.The results showed that students could make continuous progress and understand the design process more comprehensively in the course.