Abstract: As a rapidly developing curriculum category, life science is a general education curriculum system with multiple themes and perspectives, including science, humanities and social care. How to develop life science courses from excellent courses to first-class courses and what is the realization path are hot issues in the teaching reform and exploration of life science courses in colleges and universities at present. This paper focuses on the differences between excellent courses and first-class courses in course objectives, teaching concepts, teaching methods and ideological and political elements, and takes veterinary pathology course, a branch of life science courses, as an example. It describes the innovative path and construction practice of how the course develops from excellent course to first-class course from four aspects: the new orientation of course objective, the new transformation of teaching idea, the new reform of teaching method and the new integration of ideological and political elements. The aim is to provide reference for the construction of other life science courses.

Key words: veterinary pathology courses, excellent courses, first-class courses, innovation path, construction practice