Think Beyond the Major: A Campaign to Increase Student Appreciation for General Education Courses.

General education courses have been shown to enhance college students' critical thinking, problem-solving, teamwork skills, research abilities, and the ability to communicate. While these courses and the skills learned are seen as vital by faculty and future employees, students often fail to understand the benefits of general education and are less motivated to learn and perform well in these courses. In an effort to increase undergraduate perceptions about the value of general education courses, we implemented a communication campaign effort entitled Think Beyond the Major. Data collected from pre- and post-surveys indicate that student exposure to the Think Beyond the Major campaign had a positive impact on student perceptions of the general, education, and individual benefits, but not on student perceptions of the career benefits of taking general education courses. While this study suggests that campaigns could be valuable tools for colleges and universities to improve student perceptions of general education courses, future research should explore campaign efforts at larger institutions and examine ways in which to impact student attitudes about the career benefits of taking general education courses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]