Learning Analytics: Challenges and Opportunities of Using Data Analysis in Education

Background

Discussions about learning analytics as an independent field began at the turn of 2010. In 2010, Siemens published on his blog probably the first definition of analytics, which later became generally accepted by many researchers (cf. Ferguson, 2012a; Chatti et al., 2012; Siemens, 2013). In 2011, the first international conference focused specifically on learning analytics (the 1st International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge) was hosted, and, simultaneously, the Society for Learning Analytics Research was established. In the same year, learning analytics was mentioned for the first time in the annual Horizon Report (Johnson et. al., 2011), and because of that, this field started to gain the wider recognition of experts in the context of e-learning and education in general.

In the following years, significant attention was paid to learning analytics as well. Since 2012, specialized journals have begun to focus on learning analytics as well, and over time several special issues dedicated to this topic were published. Table 1 shows a basic overview of these special issues. In 2014, the first issue of a new journal focusing directly on learning analytics (the Journal of Learning Analytics) was published, as well as a first monograph dedicated specifically to the topic of learning analytics (Larusson & White, 2014). In the following years, other monographs dedicated to the topic of learning analytics were published (e.g. ElAtia, Ipperciel & Zaïane, 2016; Lai & Lehman, 2017; Peña-Ayala, 2017; Sclater, 2017).