A review on learning analytics

Learning analytics is a new research stream developed from other previous related streams such as academic analytics and educational data mining. We conducted a literature review on recent publications related to data analytics in education in various journals and conferences. With the reference model proposed by Chatti et al (2012), we proposed a refined model by introducing the second layer elements to two out of the four dimensions and propose changes to the list of options of some dimensions. We then analysed publications of the initial three years (2014-2016) in the Journal of Learning Analytics based on the refined model. We discovered five trends in learning analytics applications including extending the data landscape to non-academic data and shifting of objectives and analysis methods. Finally, we proposed four future research directions in this area and rationalised the relationship between dimensions in the model.