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University of Calgary · Alberta Post-Secondary Global Learning Toolkit

Creating a shared resource for international learning

The Office of Global Learning at the University of Calgary needed to share a substantial library of training modules, structured curricula, and best practices with international education staff at institutions across Alberta. Their team approached Built by Field, needing to build this resource without creating a maintenance burden, locking the project into expensive third-party subscriptions, or building something that felt like it belonged exclusively to one university.

Together, we built the Alberta Post-Secondary Global Learning Toolkit, a gated resource hub with a public-facing landing page, designed to serve the province's post-secondary community.

A person on a couch holding a phone that shows the sign-in screen for the Alberta Post-Secondary Global Learning Toolkit.
Three mobile pages of the Alberta Post-Secondary Global Learning Toolkit, including Global Learning Through our Post Secondary Institutions.

The UCalgary team needed to own and edit this site themselves without needing a developer for routine updates, so we considered this carefully while determining the tech stack. We landed on Payload CMS paired with Next.js and Cloudflare for the services’ durability and ease of integration, giving us robust authentication without having to route user access through external identity services. This kept the architecture straightforward and the ongoing costs low.

The gated interior pages organize content in a chapter-based system, giving the UCalgary team flexibility to create pages using a powerful rich text system, along with the flexibility to reorganize pages between sections as the toolkit grows and evolves.

Noto: A typeface for the world, a grid of glyphs from different writing systems in the Noto typeface.

On the design side, UCalgary’s team requested that things be clean with minimal animation, and no institutional allegiance, so we developed a neutral visual identity. This makes it clear that the platform is for use by Alberta's post-secondary institutions collectively, not just by the institution that created it.

Built by Field was a pleasure to work with on the Alberta Post‑Secondary Global Learning Toolkit. They were able to anticipate project needs, listened to the team, and were highly responsive, providing—on a more compressed timeline than anticipated—a creative, beautifully designed, user‑friendly, and accessible platform for our learning materials.
Cheryl Dueck, Professor
Alberta Post-Secondary Global Learning Toolkit table of contents, with colourful cards for individual, group and virtual programs, work integrated learning and institutional buy-in.
Alberta Post-Secondary Global Learning Toolkit on desktop, showing the Program Development section with its sidebar navigation and module link.
A laptop on a wooden table showing a #HalfTheStory learning platform screen with a row of team member avatars.

Midway through the project, the scope expanded to include supplementary digital document templates and printable infographics that carry the toolkit's visual language into offline and print contexts. The design system created for the website extended naturally into those formats.

The site’s flexible rich text editing system made it possible for the UCalgary team to populate a high volume of content in a short window, so when the site soft-launched in January 2026, the toolkit was already packed with material that Albertan institutions could immediately put to use.

Two printed pages from the Alberta Post-Secondary Global Learning Toolkit, one with an impact infographic, lying in a slant of sunlight.

Details

Client
University of Calgary
Year
2026
Work
Platforms and applications, Portals and member experiences, Content management systems, Interface design, Visual identity, Brand implementation

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