The analysis of data collected from the interaction of users with educational and information technology has attracted much attention as a promising approach for advancing our understanding of the learning process. This promise motivated the emergence of the new research field, learning analytics, and its closely related discipline, educational data mining. This paper first introduces the field of learning analytics and outlines the lessons learned from well-known case studies in the research literature. The paper then identifies the critical topics that require immediate research attention for learning analytics to make a sustainable impact on the research and practice of learning and teaching. The paper concludes by discussing a growing set of issues that if unaddressed, could impede the future maturation of the field. The paper stresses that learning analytics are about learning. As such, the computational aspects of learning analytics must be well integrated within the existing educational research.