Learning Analytics in Higher Education

It is known that big data has penetrated several if not all spheres of life. In higher education, the ability to take these large amounts of data and process it into something meaningful for academic decision making is commonly referred to as learning analytics. This chapter provides an overview of learning analytics and its importance, as well as identifying academic data sources, techniques used for learning analytics and prediction, and data visualisation techniques used to present analysis for better understanding and eventual decision making. It also includes a discussion of learning analytics frameworks for research and some identified research challenges.