Effective technology use has become central to university teaching, yet university teachers in Pakistan operate under structural conditions for which most digital competence frameworks were not designed. This study asked what strategies can be employed to improve technology use in Pakistani higher education and, in addressing this question, sought to develop a framework that university teachers and institutions can apply within their own contexts.
An explanatory sequential mixed-methods design was employed at the University of Gujrat. The quantitative phase surveyed 127 faculty members from a population of 478 using the CheckIn Higher Education questionnaire, based on the DigCompEdu framework, which assesses seven competence areas across six proficiency levels, from A1 to C2. The qualitative phase consisted of 32 semi-structured interviews, involving 17 participants at lower proficiency levels (A1, A2, B1) and 15 at higher levels (B2, C1, C2).
The results classified 18.9% of respondents as having low digital competence, 50.4% as having medium competence, and 30.7% as having high competence. Open Education emerged as the weakest area (59% low competence), followed by Assessment (40% low competence). Gender showed no significant differences, t(120) = −0.57, p = .57.
Thematic analysis generated eight themes among teachers with lower levels of competence and ten themes among their higher-competence counterparts, revealing practices contingent upon infrastructure, peer-mediated and informal support systems, dignity-preserving responses to public failure, and divergent engagements with artificial intelligence.
By integrating both phases, the study proposes the Infrastructure-Centred Digital Competence Framework, which translates the findings into structural, psychological, educational, and strategic actions for improving technology use. The framework conceptualizes competence as socially distributed and contingent upon infrastructure, highlighting blind spots in the DigCompEdu and TPACK frameworks while offering practical guidance for higher education in the Global South.