A landscape of learning analytics: An exercise to highlight the nature of an emergent field

Before the increasing efforts for understanding, predicting, and enhancing students’ learning in educational settings, learning analytics (LA) emerges as a candidate research area to tackle such issues. Thus, several work lines have been conducted, as well as diverse conceptual and theoretical perspectives have been arisen. Moreover, quite interesting and useful outcomes have been produced during the LA short lifetime. However, a clear idea of diverse questions is still pending to be given. (e.g., what does learning analytics mean? what are its backgrounds, related domains, and underlying elements? which are the objects of its applications? and what about the trends and challenges to be considered?) This is the reason why the chapter aims at responding those concerns by a sketch of a conceptual scenery that explains the LA background, its underlying domains and nature, including a survey of recent and relevant approaches, and a relation of risks and opportunities.