Before the emergence of computer‐based educational systems (CBES) whose aims of providing teaching and learning experiences to hundreds even thousands of users, an explosion of information (e.g., students' log data) demands sophisticated methods to gather, analyze, and interpret learners' traces to regulate and enhance education. Thus, learning analytics (LA) arises as a knowledge discovery paradigm that provides valuable findings and facilitates stakeholders to understand the learning process and its implications. Therefore, a landscape of the LA nature, its underlying factors, and applications achieved is outlined in this paper according to a suggested LA Taxonomy that classifies the LA duty from a functional perspective. The aim is to provide an idea of the LA toil, its research lines, and trends to inspire the development of novel approaches for improving teaching and learning practices. Furthermore, the scope of this review covers recently published papers in prestigious journals and conferences, where the works dated from 2016 are summarized and those corresponding to 2014–2015 are cited according to the proposed LA taxonomy. A glimpse is sketched of LA, where underlying elements frame the field foundations to ground the approaches. Moreover, LA strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and risks are highlighted to advice how the LA arena could be enhanced and empowered. In addition, this review offers an insight of the recent LA labor, as well as motivates readers to enrich the LA achievements. This work promotes the LA practice giving an account of the job being achieved and reported in literature, as well as a reflection of the state‐of‐the‐art and an acumens vision to inspire future labor. This article is categorized under: Application Areas > Education and Learning Application Areas > Science and Technology Fundamental Concepts of Data and Knowledge > Human Centricity and User Interaction

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