Adaptive Computer Games for Second Language Learning in Early Childhood

Children at L2 primary levels acquire knowledge and language skills associated with different abilities through educational games. The game introduces learning activities by using playful elements as a source of motivation. The success of the game depends on an optimum relationship between challenge, fantasy, curiosity and control. This is also applied to educational computer games. Moreover, if these games contain features which have the capacity to adapt the instructional presentation dynamically according to the characteristics of a particular student's progress, these are referred to as adaptive computer games. In this sense, the web-based adaptive hypermedia system SHAIEx makes the individualized learning of English at early ages possible by means of adaptive computer based educational games. In the process of generating interactive games, the child chooses a game from the set of games that SHAIEx has described as appropriate for his/her educational level and domain of knowledge. The client side of SHAIEx sends both the child’s identification and the identification of the selected game to the server side, which in turn selects the most appropriate multimedia elements (graphics and audio) in the content database. These elements, which are associated to the game according to the child’s characteristics -the educational level and the psychomotor skills captured in the mouse interaction style-, are adapted by SHAIEx. In this contribution we describe the architecture that makes both content and presentation adaptation feasible, and we present how SHAIEx dynamically creates educational games considering the child’s characteristics. Likewise, we show the process of generating several educational adaptive games (Choose, Body Identification, Stickers, etc.) by modifying their difficulty, mouse interaction style and the content according to a particular student’s features.