The increase in education data and advance in technology are bringing about enhanced teaching and learning methodology. The emerging field of Learning Analytics (LA) continues to seek ways to improve the different methods of gathering, analysing, managing and presenting learners' data with the sole aim of using it to improve the student learning…

Most distance learning institutions collect vast amounts of learning data. Making sense of this 'Big Data' can be a challenge, in particular when data are stored at different data warehouses and require advanced statistical skills to interpret complex patterns of data. As a leading institute on learning analytics, the Open University UK instigated…

In the case of higher education, the hills are more like mountains of data that "we're accumulating at a ferocious rate," according to Gerry McCartney, CIO of Purdue University (Indiana). "Every higher education institution has this data, but it just sits there like gold in the ground," complains McCartney. Big Data and the new tools people are…