Abstract:

Hybrid learning alternates brief theoretical input with immersive virtual environments and AI-enabled activities. It develops students’ autonomy, coordination, and time management, helping them adapt to 21st-century challenges. Continuity of study remains a key risk; artificial intelligence (AI) can analyse performance data to detect patterns and flag students at risk of dropout.

Increasingly, educational centres are combining in-person and virtual classes to facilitate students' personal learning. Hybrid teaching has transformed secondary and university education by enabling active methods that intensify teacher–student interaction. Introducing virtual reality (VR) and generative AI (GenAI) into pedagogy alters the way we teach and learn. It streamlines and optimises the interaction between teacher and student, helping them to achieve the objectives. They allow personalised teaching, adapting it to each student's pace and style, and help avoid repetitive tasks in organising the teaching and learning process.

These tools open up a vast and exciting field of possibilities. They enable more comprehensive, engaging, interactive, and creative learning, increasing attention and motivation through immersive experiences. We can simulate real-world complexity safely and design subject-specific virtual scenarios. Effective practice requires clear methodological strategies, purposeful selection of applications, and guidance on when and how to deploy them in each subject.

We report implementations in two secondary schools in Valencia (Colegio García Broch and Centro DOCEO) and a personal case involving special educational needs. In the first school, average grades—both individual and class mean—rose by 2.6 points from one term to the next after adoption. In the second, a student with obsessive–compulsive disorder (OCD) who had stopped writing was able, through VR-mediated artistic composition with virtual movements, to resume writing and drawing. At the university level, we piloted GenAI within cooperative learning (base teams and expert teams) to deliver team projects on diverse topics; each project was completed within five one-hour sessions

In sum, GenAI and VR support faster, longer-lasting learning; create dynamic, participatory classes that stimulate attention, interest and creativity; and enable personalised, inclusive teaching for diverse classrooms. Above all, success depends on teachers’ professional judgement in their real classroom contexts and on the students they teach.

Keywords:

Hybrid teaching, Virtual reality, Generative AI, Inclusive education, Cooperative learning, Pedagogical Learning.