Social Work Toolkit
Educational platform with region-specific content delivery for social work professionals.
Multi-institutional educational platform for social work professionals, with regional content restrictions, interactive learning resources, and institutional customisation — serving universities across the UK and internationally.
The Challenge
Social work education varies significantly by region — what's taught in England differs from Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland, let alone internationally. Bloomsbury needed a platform that could deliver region-appropriate content to the right users while keeping everything managed in a single system. Institutions also needed their own branding, analytics, and the ability to embed content directly into their learning management systems.
- Restrict content visibility by country/region — students should only see content relevant to their jurisdiction
- Support institutional customisation (logos, colours, Google Analytics)
- Integrate with university LMS platforms via LTI 1.3
- Deliver interactive learning content (H5P, quizzes, simulations)
- Authenticate via multiple methods (Shibboleth, IP ranges, email domains)
- Allow anonymous visitors to browse some content while restricting full access
The Solution
Built a regional access control system on Drupal that goes well beyond standard permissions, using custom node access grants to filter content by country at the database level.
- Regional access control: Custom grant system — content is tagged to countries, and users see only what matches their institution's or personal country. Anonymous visitors get a curated UK-only view
- Content hierarchy: Themes → Topics → Resources, with automatic parent-child synchronisation (rename a Theme and all child path aliases update)
- Institutional customisation: Each institution gets custom logo, colour theme, GA4 tracking code, and LTI credentials — all manageable by institution admins without developer involvement
- LTI 1.3 integration: Embeds into Blackboard, Canvas, Moodle, and Brightspace with automatic role mapping and institution detection
- Interactive content: H5P quizzes and simulations, custom quiz paragraphs, and click-reveal components for case study walkthroughs
- Multi-method authentication: Shibboleth SSO, IP-based access for institutional networks, and email domain validation — all routed through the centralised Authentication Hub
The Results
A platform that cleanly solves the regional content problem — editors tag content to regions, and the access control system handles the rest. Institution admins can manage their own users, branding, and analytics without contacting Bloomsbury. The shared module architecture means features developed for Skills for Study (like LTI integration and pre-enrollment) could be deployed here with minimal additional work.