Abstract: Under the background of the cultivation of high-level talents for the building of a strong maritime nation, a staged expansion model-based teaching innovation of the basic course of principles of underwater acoustics is proposed in this paper with the goal of cultivating students'high-level abilities. In the proposed model, with the platforms of the course, the competition, and school-enterprise cooperation, firstly, the teaching contents are reconstructed and staged problem chains are designed. Then multiple teaching methods of associate analogy and virtuality-reality integration are applied to achieve the staged cultivation of student ability. The teaching practice results show that the proposed model can stimulate students'initiative and creativity and improve their higher-level abilities.

Key words: Underwater acoustics, Teaching model, Staged expansion, Problem chains, Associate analogy, Virtuality-reality integration