Journal of Higher Education Research

This study explores higher-education teachers’ conceptions of educational technology, factors influencing its application, self-perceived competency, and views of training programs. Adopting systematic grounded theory, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 teachers at a Chinese university. Findings reveal that teachers view educational technology as supportive tools and instructional processes, guided by educational beliefs and driven by professional responsibility and social development. Four layers of influencing factors were identified: teacher-level factors, student-level factors, technology-level factors, and environmental-level factors. Teachers’ motivation for improvement comes from both internal professional responsibility and external institutional and peer pressure. They prefer practical, pedagogically integrated training with flexible, interactive, and classified delivery modes. This study provides a grounded framework to understand teachers’ real needs and offers implications for optimizing institutional support and training systems to promote deep integration of educational technology in higher education.