Kajabi Introductions

In late 2020, I was introduced to the Kajabi platform. As you might imagine, from someone with a long career in education, I'd been steeped in the many pathways and byways (and cul-de-sacs) involved in teaching and learning up until then.

As I started using Kajabi, I knew almost immediately that I was in for a very different experience from the curriculum development work I had done, either writing seven textbooks, preparing curriculum advice papers or creating online resources for creative learning programmes.

Instead, what I found in Kajabi’s software was a chance to design learning experiences in relational and personalised ways. I believe this is crucial if we are ever to get past the linear slide presentation that dominates online learning technology software, except, of course, for the very expensive and complex methods that are dependent on a high knowledge of coding, AI, graphics, and multimedia applications.

Building 'product'.

As Kajabi is primarily created for freelancers intent on monetising their knowledge, the labels that frame it are commercial, as the following advertisement for the software confirms.

Notice terms such as 'product', 'offer', and 'pipeline'. However, as the claim in the promotion above also confirms, Kajabi is in no way a 'publishing house' such as Apple Books, which charges a percentage on every sale made on its platform. Kajabi's subscription fee is purely for its software. This allows educators working within education systems to use Kajabi with the same freedom as any online productivity tool offered by Google, Microsoft, or Adobe. However, unlike those generic tools, Kajabi primarily focuses on personalising and differentiating experiences between teachers and learners (or, in Kajabi speak, businesses and clients).

At the centre is 'the product' - a short course, a substantial programme, an interactive publication, a video, an audio file, a podcast, or a coaching session. Regardless of 'the content', using Kajabi as a curriculum developer means seeing 'the product' as a catalyst that ripples out in ever-increasing circles.

What happened next?

Diagram: The backend of the Kajabi course authoring suite

I heeded the following sentence from the Kajabi course authoring guide.

We will provide you with best practices and strategies, but it will be up to you to fine-tune your business into a well-oiled machine.

Commercially speaking, the statement alludes to how authenticity can be transformed into a selling point. However, pedagogically speaking, it also refers to the fact that every lesson taught should be valued as a localised and focused encounter, as shown in Kajabi’s link to Jodee Peevor.

Diagram: Kajabi ambassador, Jodee Peevor.

Kajabi by design

Consequently, unlike other course authoring tools, I felt Kajabi was, by design, proactively arranging the learning content about several vital applications: emails, surveys, targeted feedback, assessments, customer relationship management, web pages, conditional automation and more. Again, by design, these enable me, in turn, to differentiate and personalise every part of 'the product' I offer within the curriculum I teach. Thus, the three terms that became my mantra when I began using Kajabi were relationships, pedagogy and audiences. These defined for me the dynamic of Kajabi's online environment.

Relationships because teaching and learning, as Loris Malaguzzi emphasises so admirably, are nothing if not an exchange:

Learning and teaching should not stand on opposite banks and just watch the river flow by; instead, they should embark together on a journey down the water. Through an active, reciprocal exchange, teaching can strengthen learning and how to learn.

Malaguzzi, L. 1998, ‘History, ideas and philosophy’, in Edwards, C. Gandini, L. and Forman, G. 1998, The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach, Ablex Publishing, Greenwich (p83).

Pedagogy is at the heart and soul of all we do in education. It's our job as educators to model a more effective way of learning how to learn. We stand on the shoulders of giants like Maria Montessori, John Dewey, John Hattie, and every past and contemporary explorer of what it means to learn with passion, courage, resilience, and perseverance.

And audiences because we now live in a digital age where the performative elements of human communications are signposted everywhere. Within our current digital ecologies, dialogue and conversation is ‘computer-mediated communication’. Andrew Wood and Matthew Smith describe in Online Communication: Linking Technology, Identity, & Culture (2005, 2014) as ‘somehow different’. This is principally, they suggest, because of the “blurring of technology with our everyday lives” that fuels a tension arising from the immediate versus the mediated nature of our moving from face-to-face to technology-assisted communication. This tension suggests that, whether we like it or not, participating in learning online compels us into a kind of ‘performance art’. 

Referring to sociologist Erving Goffman's (1959) use of dramaturgy and the theatrical metaphor as a process by which humans enacted everyday life, Wood and Smith note that it is Goffman’s work that “has been instrumental in advancing the understanding of how elements of performance contribute to what and how people communicate” and that more recently “researchers have echoed Goffman’s explanation of how people construct identities online. Furthermore, online identity now inhabits cyberspace, in which the authors highlight how language is “the primary vehicle for establishing one’s own and perceiving another’s online persona”.