The purpose of this literature review is threefold: (a) to conduct a critical review of the published scientific literature on Learning Analytics (LA), (b) to identify current trends, gaps, and research questions in the field, and (c) to summarize the existing empirical evidence of the LA adoption. From a sample of 390 articles, 118 were included in the review after searching online bibliographic databases. The selected empirical evidence articles were examined for their research questions, stakeholders, and limitations using qualitative content analysis. The results demonstrated that LA is an interdisciplinary field and that developing efficient techniques is a new research challenge for the educational community. This study discusses the results of defining and analyzing five conceptual dimensions: the object of analysis, technology, objectives, stakeholders, and ethics. It provides guidelines from the literature for scholars, faculty, course designers, researchers, and other educational stakeholders interested in developing responsible, efficient, and pedagogical LA approaches.