Big data refers to a large amount of data, structured or unstructured, from a variety of sources. These data may be too large, complex or rapid to be managed with traditional data management tools. Big data analytics aims to identify different relationships and patterns within these data sets and to obtain meaningful information from these data. Various sectors such as finance, health, production, transportation and commerce benefit from the value of the data produced in increasing amounts. Big data has the potential to provide valuable insights to organizations to facilitate decision making, improve products and services, increase efficiency, or identify and solve problems. Another sector where big data is used is education. Higher education institutions collect more data than ever before, as they use digital media for various purposes, especially for the storage of student data. Large amounts of data have the capacity to provide valuable information about the learning process to key education stakeholders such as students, faculty, administrators, instructional designers, and provide several benefits. In this study, the use of big data in open and distance learning is discussed and examples of applications in the world are given. In addition, the study summarizes the difficulties encountered in accessing, analyzing and using big data.