Presenters: Susan Dawson & Gary Motteram

This webinar describes the setting-up of WhatsApp group Communities of Practice (COPs) in rural areas of Côte d’Ivoire, where teachers typically have little access to professional development opportunities. We explain the rationale for the use of WhatsApp in the project and show how the project began with learning from the use of WhatsApp to support COPs in Rwanda, another challenging context. All these ideas informed the design of a workshop to initiate the COPs in Côte d’Ivoire. We describe the content and delivery of the workshop and explore the challenges and possibilities of working in this way. We also show how our findings are informing our current projects and teaching online during the Covid-19 pandemic.