Until the early 2020s, conventional face-to-face lectures were the set standard for imparting knowledge to a large crowd of students at universities. However, when the pandemic as a drastic event changed the world overnight, attempts were made to digitize the teaching-learning processes in order to keep teaching going. Arguably, this led to some beneficial new approaches, while several valued teaching elements could not be pursued at least temporarily. Looking back at the pandemic, we investigate what are key factors that determine if students perceive digital media and learning elements as beneficial, and whether and how their significance changed from 2020 to 2023. Answers to these questions might help shaping learning and teaching in a post-pandemic era. To answer these questions, we launched a survey in two waves - one right after the first pandemic term and another one after the first post-pandemic term. For this purpose, student attitudes around topics of digital teaching and online lecturing were queried; among other things, also with regard to their motivation and awareness. As a result, shifts in students’ interests in digital teaching-learning settings and their choices in digital learning opportunities can be observed. These findings are used to derive some hypotheses how future teaching concepts might look like that better respond to students’ needs.