The current quantitative research aims to outline the importance of the student-teacher relationship in the online teaching process, in higher technical institutions. The study focuses on the teacher-student relationship and the support provided by teachers in the online teaching process. To maintain consistency with previous work, we have applied the 27 items used in a previous survey addressing the quality assurance in teaching online on 341 students in their first and second academic year at University Politehnica of Timi?oara (UPT), University Politehnica of Bucharest (UPB) and Valahia of Targoviste. The results show that 69.6% of the respondents agree that teachers actively involve the students in the act of receiving the transmitted knowledge, by encouraging, stimulating and training them to actively listen and ask questions, to express opinions and formulate hypotheses, to draw conclusions and think critically. Moreover, 69.1% of the students consider they receive support from teachers who constantly create rapport with them based on codes known to the students, always explaining the scientific terms, the new phrases and the concepts introduced in the course. The results of the research prove that high quality academic instruction must be designed to be appropriate to students' educational levels, to create opportunity for analysis and to effectively guide students' thinking. Building positive rapport between students and teachers becomes a prerequisite for efficient online teaching in technical higher education.

online teaching, technical higher education, teacher-student relationship