With the development of a series of educational reforms in China, transforming to applied colleges and universities has become a hot spot for the development of higher education. Under the background of college and university transformation, the optimization and promotion of the teaching quality of applied courses is the core and difficult point for the connotation construction of applied colleges and universities. Taking the teaching of steel structure course as an example, this paper comprehensively applies the case analysis method, literature analysis method and experiential summary method to determine the nature of the problem speculatively, and puts forward method and path selection for optimizing teaching effect of the course and improving the teaching quality from several aspects of precise course orientation, reconstruct teaching content, innovate teaching mode and strengthen security conditions. The method and path selection for optimization and promotion of the teaching quality of applied courses proposed in this paper have important practical and theoretical significance for improving the quality of talent training in applied colleges and universities.