The e-learning environment and its instruments have diversified with computer and internet technologies and provided new opportunities for open and distance educational researchers. As a result of the widespread use of the electronic environment in education, learner interactions were also transferred into the electronic environment. One of the important advantages of this new environment is being able to record learner interactions in considerable detail. In the electronic environment, the frequently of access of a learner to content, the duration and times of such access, the user’s progress, the diversity of sources the user accesses, the subjects the user shares, the times, quantity, and party the user engages in sharing can be recorded utilizing a computer and information technologies. Analysis of all such data led to appearance of learning analytics as a new field. Learning analytics was defined as a due field aiming to access trends or structures utilizing large educational data in order to move customized higher education forward in the report of New Media Consortium (NMC) on higher education published in 2014. This study presents a theoretical starting point of learning analytics, definitions made in related literature, scope and structure of the field, research environments and tools as well as suggestions for studies to be conducted in the field.