This work presents a study that tracked data generated from distance education systems, and made use of these data, often neglected, to produce information and knowledge about the system itself as well as the involved people. The strategy presented go from the basic data handle on the distance education systems, using statistical applications methods, applied for data processing. The presented activities aim to improve the quality of the service offered on online courses, and also help solve some issues, for instance the student's evasion. It is also presenting a case study where statistical methods were applied to deal with the student's evasion in a real distance education system. The main goal was to start the use of learning analytics concepts.