###### Abstract  
The paper identifies the perceptions of first-year undergraduate students from the Faculty of Physical Education and Sports in Galati on online teaching activities, dominant and needful in the current pandemic context. The questionnaire used contains 23 items and was structured based on four distinctive factors, namely attractiveness, accessibility, motivation and efficiency; it was applied after the winter session of the academic year 2020-2021. The values of the internal consistency coefficient Cronbach's alpha indicate for the four mentioned factors a high fidelity for the measurements of the investigated features. The results of the 147 completed questionnaires allowed the definition of the independent variables sex (boys and girls) and environment of origin (rural and urban) the identification of their influence on the scores of each item (dependent variables) by using the statistical technique MANOVA (multivariate and univariate analysis), besides the values of F and the corresponding significance thresholds; the magnitude of the effect, expressed by partial eta squared (\(\eta^{2}_{\text{P}}\)), was also calculated. Even if the averages of item scores differ between sexes and backgrounds, the differences noted are in few cases significant: attractiveness and socialization for those in urban areas; participation in activities and effective involvement for girls; technical deficiencies, platform logging and weak computer skills for those in rural areas; and an increase in free time for girls and students in urban areas. The study undertaken allows the identification of the favorable aspects and the shortcomings of online teaching activities, these being the premises for optimizing the teaching process in the following stages. p 19 June 202  
increased accessibility to higher education for more people, signaling a higher number of students enrolled vs. the face-to-face variant [2]. In the case of physical education, online learning has not yet streamlined the implementation mechanisms; it facilitates access to information through various platforms/applications, but this aspect must be adapted to regional and local particularities, and maximizing the learning capacity is conditioned by the internet access [3]. In Romania, the alternative of teaching in a hybrid system is a solution that facilitates the adaptation to the problems generated by the pandemic in the higher education system, thus diminishing the percentage of the students who would react by dropping out of school. This alternative makes the transition from the classic way of teaching/face-to-face system to the one based exclusively on the scenario of online activities, avoiding negative perceptions and the shock felt when moving online [4]. Artificial intelligence can support the educational system without completely replacing the classic teaching alternative or option [5]. The strong evolution of technology facilitates the continuity of teaching in the academic world, through the existence of virtual assistants with a role in supporting the learning process [6], but the transition from classical to hybrid education is possible only by identifying new needs of the students, based on data collected from them and the provision of personalized training options [7; 8]. The efficient development process or unfolding of the online teaching process is conditioned by the synergistic action of all the factors involved: students/beneficiaries, teachers and members of the administrative staff. Problems are found especially for higher education institutions that have not previously experienced the option of online teaching, and the discrepancies related to internet access and the heterogeneity of students' computer skills are causes that hinder the optimization of the teaching process [9].