What comes next in the field of academic e-learning? Which e-learning trends will dominate the discourse at universities? Answering such questions is the basis for the adaptation of service strategies and IT-infrastructures within institutions of Higher Education. The present paper therefore introduces methodology and findings of a trend study in the field of e-teaching. The overall interest of the study was the analysis of life stages and future potentials of e-learning innovations. A content analysis has been conducted based on 427 scientific articles of leading German-speaking elearning conferences. Thus, e-learning trends and hypes in academic teaching have been identified and characterised. The following paper focusses on two things: on the one hand, existing academic concepts of trend research in the field of elearning will be discussed, and on the other hand, the above-mentioned study will be introduced.i.