To assist European universities to become more mature users and custodians of digital data about their students as they learn online, the SHEILA project builds a policy development framework that promotes formative assessment and personalized learning, by taking advantage of direct engagement of stakeholders in the development process. The field of learning analytics with its associated methods of online student data analysis, holds great potential to address the challenges confronting European higher education institutions. While the use of learning analytics has gained much attention and has been/is being adopted by many higher education institutions in Europe and the world, the maturity levels of higher education institutions in terms of being ‘student data informed’ are only in the early stages. Composed of a team of research and institutional leaders in learning analytics, the SHEILA project aims to address this gap. The project is funded by the Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency through the Erasmus + program.