Developing a Hybrid Educational Platform based on Virtual World Learning for Teaching Renewable Energy Domain Ioannis Hatzilygeroudis 1 , Boris Stoyanov 2 , Zuzana Palkova 3 , Foteini Grivo- kostopoulou 1 , Konstantinos Kovas 1 , Isidoros Perikos 1 , Dorina Popovici 4 , Sorin Ionitescu 4 1 University of Patras, Greece (ihatz@ceid.upatras.gr) 2 E-Training Solutions, Germany (boris.stoyan@gmail.com) 3 Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra, Slovakia (Zuzana.Palkova@uniag.sk) 4 University “Politehnica” of Bucharest, Romania (sorin.ionitescu@gmail.com) Abstract: AVARES Project, which runs under Leonardo Da Vinci Lifelong Learning Program, aims to to develop a Virtual Reality environment, create in- novative Virtual Reality learning methodologies and integrate them with tradi- tional learning for teaching more efficiently the challenging field of Renewal Energy Sources (RES). RES domain is considered by many tutors to be a hard domain for students to deeply understand via traditional learning methods. The Hybrid Educational Platform to be developed in AVARES combines traditional learning procedures offered to students via Moodle, a very popular Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), with learning procedures delivered to students in a 3D Virtual World. The Virtual World is developed in Open Simulator (Open- Sim), an open source platform for creating multi user 3D Virtual Worlds. Moo- dle VLE focuses on the management of the learning processes, whereas the Vir- tual World environment offers students the ability to interact and experiment with items and constructs in a similar way they would do in real world. So, stu- dents can get a deeper understanding of the functionality of special items such as energy machines, solar collectors, wind turbines etc. In this paper, we present a first design proposal of integrating a VLE and a Virtual Reality 3D world. Keywords: Virtual Reality in Education, 3D Virtual Learning Environment, Teaching Renewable Energy domain, 3D Visualization, Student 3D learning scenarios 1 Introduction The AVARES Project, which runs under Leonardo Da Vinci Lifelong Learning Program, was commenced in October 2012 and will be completed in September 2014. The aim of the project is to establish a 3D virtual learning environment and multime-