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