Abstract: Emerging technologies continue to influence education in the way that instruction is designed, delivered, and consumed. As online learning has become a common mode of instruction delivery (Martin & Ndoye, 2016), more data has become available, as well as faster, more efficient tools to analyze it. Learning Analytics is one such technology, and is defined by the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SOLAR) as “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for the purposes of understanding and optimizing, learning and the environment in which it occurs” (SOLAR, 2012). This paper discusses the role of learning analytics in instructional design, the role that Learning Management Systems (LMSs) play in learning analytics, the benefits of learning analytic tools, and the limitations and future implications of this emerging technology.
