The study aimed at assessing visitors’ learning and perception using the Personal
Meaning Maps methodology. The study was conducted within the course "Museum Information
Systems", implemented under the Program "Applied Informatics in Arts and Humanities..." of
Saint Petersburg State University according to the University requirements. Thirty-five thirdyear
bachelors (19–22 years-old) took part in the experiment. A guided tour around the thematic
multimedia exhibit "Our Romantic Emperor", dedicated to the era of Paul I, was held at the
Multimedia Center of the Russian Museum.
Quantitative and qualitative analysis of the collected data showed interesting results. Indeed,
we can state that PMMs allow studying new knowledge of specialists in the field of Digital
Humanities. Also, we observed that PMMs, used as a pedagogical tool, activates both common
theoretical knowledge of learners and the students’ personal experience, allowing them to gain a
more complete picture of the scientific phenomenon as well as of a historical fact. Moover,
PMMs allow each student to create a “baseline” as the starting step for a discussion, thus
empowering knowledge by a peer-to-peer interaction as well as other significant interactions.
Keywords: Personal Meaning Maps, Digital Humanities, Blended Learning
1. INTRODUCTION
In this paper, we aimed at assessing visitors’ learning and perception about a topic or