Learning Analytics – A Growing Field and Community Engagement

Abstract

This editorial discusses events that marked the period since the publication of the previous issue – the 5^th International Conference on Learning Analytics and Knowledge (LAK 2015), Learning Analytics Summer Institutes (LASIs 2015), and Learning Analytics Policy Briefing in the European Parliament. This period saw releases of two important publications for system-wide implementation of learning analytics in higher education published by Jisc and the Australian Government’s Office for Learning and Teaching. An important recognition of the maturation of the field of learning analytics is the recent publication of the 2015 Google Scholar Metrics identifying the LAK proceedings as the only conference proceedings among the 20 most cited publication venues in educational technology. Building bridges for enhancing impact is another important activity for the field maturation through developing linkages of learning analytics with educational data mining, user modeling, the learning sciences, technology enhanced learning, cyber-learning, and learning at scale. This editorial also introduces a special section published in this issue dedicated to the exploration of connections between self-regulated learning and learning analytics, introduces two regular research papers featured in this issue and describes several special sections that will be published in future issues of the journal.