One of the difficulties in teaching a large size class is to involve all the students in
the learning processes. It is difficult also to measure how far the student could
absorb the material given in the class. To assure a continuous improvement in the
learning process, measuring the achievement only in midterm or final examination
is not adequate. This paper concern with those two problems, i.e. how to enhance
the student achievement and how to measure it continuously, especially in
mathematical modeling based courses. This paper present a study on the author
experience in managing Operations Research classes in undergraduate program of
Industrial Engineering Department of Atma Jaya Yogyakarta University. There are
three approaches have been applied and studied related with enhancing and
measuring student achievement continuously. The first approach is running quizzes
in the class regularly. The problems for these quizzes are come from the lecturer.
The second approach is giving topic based take home assignments regularly after
the discussion of the topic. The problems for these assignments are real case based
problem created by the student according to the topic previously discussed in the
class. The third approach is also giving take home assignments regularly, but the
assignments are given before the discussion of the topic in the class, and the
problems are come from the lecturer or the textbook. The result of the study shows
that the most effective approach to enhance the student achievement is the second
approach. The first approach is not quite effective because the students are only
enforced to find the solution mathematically without trying to understand the
characteristic of a certain mathematical model related with the real case. The third
approach is effective only for a few students, i.e. the students having high level of
academic capability. Learning by themselves first to do the assignments is too hard
for the most undergraduate students of Industrial Engineering Department of
Atma Jaya Yogyakarta University.