Background:

providing the professionals of the Ibero-American Network of Pedagogy (Redipe) with knowledge for their action when facing the COVID-19 pandemic is a necessity; doing it in a virtual environment, a challenge.

Objective:

to describe the use of the WhatsApp application in a pre-congress course on social determinants of health, education and sustainable development goals in times of COVID-19.

Methods:

a descriptive investigation was carried out from July to August 2022 with professionals who are part of Redipe, Cuba. Theoretical methods were used: analysis-synthesis and systemic approach; Empirical ones: bibliographic review for the selection and foundation of the contents of the pre-congress course, technique of the positive, negative and interesting and the criteria of specialists for the evaluation of the designed product.

Results:

the pre-congress course was structured in three topics, with its objectives, contents, methodological orientations, teaching tasks and basic bibliography. Once its design was completed, it was evaluated by specialists and implemented in a virtual environment for two days. Its aspects were highlighted: positive, the relevance of the content provided; negative, the restriction of technology due to insufficiencies of mobile phones; and interesting, the indissoluble modernization of the topics in accordance with the articles published online, among other criteria.

Conclusions:

the WhatsApp application is presented as a tool to promote collaboration and interaction during the pre-congress course and as a didactic resource that fostered learning from distance education.

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