Int. J. of Social Media and Interactive Learning Environments, Vol. 4, No. 1 1 Copyright © 2016 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd. Between Virtual & Real: Exploring Hybrid Interaction and Communication in Virtual Worlds Athanasios Christopoulos, Marc Conrad and Mitul Shukla {athanasios.christopoulos; marc.conrad; mitul.shukla}@beds.ac.uk Department of Computer Science & Technology, University of Bedfordshire, Park Square, Luton, LU1 3JU, UK Abstract: In this paper we aim to explore the potential advantages of interactions on student engagement and provide guidance to educators who seek interactive and immersive learning experiences for their students through the use of hybrid virtual learning approaches. We define as hybrid virtual learning the educational model where students are co-present and interacting simultaneously both within a virtual world and the physical classroom receiving stimuli related to the learning material in the virtual world from both directions. In order to achieve our aim, we categorised interactions in various categories and observed the complex network of interactions which can be developed in a virtual world when groups of people are working together in order to achieve different goals. The findings suggest that students spontaneously tend to use the interaction channels only when it is deemed to be necessary. Keywords: virtual world; virtual learning; OpenSim; higher education; hybrid virtual learning; student engagement; interactions. Authors’ Bio: Athanasios obtained his BSc (Hons) in 2011 & MSc by Research in Computer Science in 2013 from the University of Bedfordshire. Subsequently, he joined, once again, the Institute for Research in Applicable Computing of the same University, as Ph.D. candidate whilst, he was appointed to work as Research Demonstrator in the Department of Computer Science & Technology. He is currently working on the field of Virtual Reality and in particular on the effects which have interactions on the development of learners’ engagement. Marc Conrad works for the Faculty of Creative Arts, Technology and Science at the University of Bedfordshire as a Principal Lecturer in Computer Science. Being educated as a Mathematician, where he received his PhD, his research interests are now in areas as diverse as Virtual Worlds, Algebraic Number Theory, Software Engineering, Project Management, Trust, Security and Art. Together with his colleague Tim French he developed a lightweight mathematical model of trust propagation that identifies how much experience matters to establish trust. Marc Conrad is also the inventor of a framework to evaluate virtual worlds. His personal web site is http://perisic.com/marc Mitul has worked at the University of Bedfordshire since 2004. His research interest is primarily around social media technologies and how we communicate with one another using these mediating technologies. Particularly, he is interested in the affective impact and complex communication capability in using mediating technologies. Previously he has worked as a lead on the JISC funded Building Capacities programme at the University of Bedfordshire. The project investigated how research staff at the