Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, students around the world have seen their schooling completely disrupted. Their teachers have had to reorganize in a hurry and even develop digital skills to be able to teach their classes synchronously but at a distance. Thanks to strong political incentives, both at national and university level, many tools have been massively deployed: digital learning management systems (e.g. Moodle), collaborative digital platforms (e.g. Google Meets, Microsoft Teams and Zoom) and even social networks (e.g. Facebook and Twitter). While this unprecedented health crisis has demonstrated the essential role of digital technologies in higher education, major questions arise regarding the quality of distance education, the learning process itself and the evaluation of knowledge and skills acquired at a distance. In this policy paper, about a hundred students from engineering schools and master's degrees in France were followed during several periods of confinement in order to provide some answers to these questions. The performance of the students in this very particular context is analyzed. The feelings of students, but also those of teachers, are also discussed, both on the use of digital technologies and on the digital transformation of higher education