Hybrid educational worlds

The GSyC/LibreSoft research group at the Universidad Rey Juan Carlos has been investigating serious games with smartphones. In our approach, platform developers and educators do not need to create complete virtual worlds, which are in general very time and effort consuming. In the games that have been developed, participants are provided through a mobile phone with the necessary information to imagine a virtual world and interact with other participants and objects in a manner consistent with the learning objectives. In this paper this type of game is presented and the implications of using such hybrid worlds in the creation of serious games for smartphones will be discussed.