Internal Quality Management Systems: ‘baby cribs’ for learning analytics approaches?

​Learning Analytics (LA) is becoming a hot topic in the area of higher education, both in terms of its application in institutions and on the production of research about it (Waheed et al., 2018; Zilvinskis and Borden, 2017). In this paper we intend to discuss the interplays between internal quality management (QM) systems, designed to assure and improve in a responsive and proactive way learning and teaching quality at higher education institutions (HEIs), and LA approaches. The discussion is based on the case of the University of Aveiro (Portugal), using data about the existence (or not) of a LA approach at the university, which was collected through focus groups run with different institutional actors, under the scope of the SQELT project . The results show that in the actors’ opinions such an approach exists to a certain extent, mainly due to the mechanisms and tools the university has implemented under its internal QM system. It seems that these systems can work as ‘baby cribs’ for the implementation or further development of LA approaches.