Author(s)

Guoqing Zhao, Xiaojing Wang, Meng Li, Xiulin Ma^*

Faculty of Education, Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China.

This paper presents a study carried out at Beijing Normal University with the aim of investigating whether semi-finished products could affect liberal arts students’ mastery of knowledge, mastery of operational skills and ICT self-efficacy in multimedia creation. The literature has argued that obstacles in creating multimedia artifacts lead liberal arts students to have low ICT self-efficacy. Semi-finished products are used as a scaffolding to facilitate liberal arts students’ creation of multimedia artifacts, such as Flash animations and interactive web-pages. However, empirical research on the effects of such scaffolding is lacking. We conducted a quasi-experiment in which we compared an experimental class of 117 students majoring in History with a control class of 102 students majoring in Chinese Language and Literature who took a Multimedia Technology and Webpage Producing (MTWP) course. The experimental class (revising condition) used semi-finished products to develop animations and web-pages while the control class (creating condition) developed animations and web-pages from scratch. Data were collected through a Knowledge and Skill Test and a Scale on ICT self-efficacy. T-tests were used to compare outcomes of the two conditions. Results revealed that students’ mastery of knowledge in the revising condition was significantly higher than students in the creation condition, but there were no significant differences between the two conditions in terms of students’ mastery of operational skills. Results also showed that there were significant differences between the two conditions in terms of students’ ICT self-efficacy. Further analysis indicated that students’ ICT self-efficacy in the revising condition improved significantly from pre-test to post-test, while those in the creating condition declined, but it was not significant. Implications for ICT teaching in higher education were discussed.

Multimedia, Webpage, Semi-Finished Products, Creating from Scratch, ICT Self-Efficacy

Zhao, G. , Wang, X. , Li, M. and Ma, X. (2018) Effects of Semi-Finished Products as a Scaffolding on University Liberal Art Students’ Learning of Multimedia Technology and Webpage Producing. Creative Education, 9, 2405-2418. doi: 10.4236/ce.2018.915181.