Abstract:

As a result of the increase in popularity of online learning applications and the use of learning management systems, it has become important to take advantage of the huge amount of data that is already stored. These huge data sets are acquired from student activities such as quizzes, assignments, self-tests, chats, etc, that are taken from learning management systems. This vast amount of data collected, known as educational big data, can be used to increase the understanding of student behavior and to make future predictions and forecasts based on their past activities to improve their performance. Higher education institutions are already conducting research on these educational big data in order to learn about students’ performance patterns. Resultantly, learning analytics has become one of the most important subjects in this regard and it has positively impacted the teaching and learning process. Educators and universities, in turn, can take advantage of learning analytics results to investigate student performance and acknowledge their progress. In addition, it helps to provide learners with concrete feedback about their learning path and predict future academic attitudes. Also, it could assist them with personalising their learning and moving toward adaptive learning. It is important to note that, recently, some learning management systems such as Moodle have created building plugins for learning analytics process. This indicates the importance of learning analytics for both learners and educators. For this purpose, a narrative literature review will be conducted by the researchers in this article. Despite the fact that studies on learning analytics have previously been conducted in the education field, according to the reading and reviewing process, there is a need for more studies to be done on the new approaches in learning analytics for learning management systems. This study will focus on the specific learning analytics tools that are being used by universities and for what purposes. Also, it will examine how these tools will provide benefits to students, teachers and education institutions. In addition, it will show the importance of learning analytics in the higher education sector. Finally, this paper will show some of the tools that are currently used in higher educations for learning analytics.

Keywords:

Learning Analytics (LA), Education, e-learning, Educational Data Mining, LMS, Moodle.