It is our pleasure to welcome you to LAK 2014. This is the fourth meeting of Learning Analytics and Knowledge, and this conference has quickly become an established meeting place for top researchers from learning sciences, data mining, learning analytics, computer sciences and other fields. Since the first conference held in 2011, the Learning Analytics community has grown and matured. The annual meetings of LAK are convened by an international professional society, the Society for Learning Analytics Research (SoLAR), which has also just this year launched a new scholarly journal, the Journal of Learning Analytics. The rapid growth of this field and the public attention drawn to the explosion of online technology platforms and services has convinced many of us that we are engaged in an exciting area that holds great promise for innovating teaching and learning.