The relevance of the research is determined by the insufficient development of theoretical and methodological ideas about hybrid learning as a combined pedagogical technology using both online and face-to-face learning which reduces its potential and makes it difficult to be used in the university education. Purpose: to clarify the nature of hybrid learning as an independent category and methodology of its cognition for more effective use at the present stage and, on this basis, to determine the prospects for its development. Methods (tools): reconstruction of the prehistory and the initial phase of the formation of a hybrid learning format, etymological analysis. Results: the data on the origin of hybrid learning abroad and its development in Russia have been clarified. The main approaches to the interpretation of the hybrid format of education have been highlighted, its axiological significance for higher education has been revealed. Conclusions: the concept of “hybrid learning” appeared to denote a type of technology of a mixed learning format. However, the technological approach to the interpretation of hybrid learning has shown its limitations, and the axiological approach is designed to compensate for it. The prospects for the development of learning hybridization are associated with the harmonization of technological and axiological approaches. This will create conditions for the development of hybrid learning models through axiological selection of the most optimal learning technologies, which in turn can cause an additional positive synergetic eff ect. Practical significance: theoretical and methodological ideas about the nature of hybrid learning can be used to develop the didactic and methodological content of the hybrid format in higher education. The results obtained can also be used in modeling individual hybrid learning formats, taking into consideration the industry orientation of universities and the value preferences of teachers and students.