Task 3b: Theories Relating to Networking

What is a professional network?

-a work related community held together by either close working affiliation or more distant but common work interests or needs.

Cooperation

Cooperation is closely linked with Game theory where one player succeeds with the help of another.  Robert Axelrod is a researcher and found the benefits of cooperating fully with others until you reach a point of maximum benefit and then to 'defect.'

Prisoner's Dilemma (picture below) is a game developed by Axelrod to discover patterns of behaviour. Axelrod described this method as"cooperate until maximum benefit produced then deflect"

Prisoner's Dilemma 

The following characteristics of an evolutionary game are:

• Be nice - cooperate, never be the first to defect
• Be provocable - returen defection fro defection, cooperation for cooperation
• Don't be envious - be fair with your partner
• Don't be too clever - or, don't be to tricky.

I do think this is important as both parties need to be mutuel in order for cooperation to be beneficial.

Affiliation

Affiliation is a social process that provides us with a network of support that will help us when we are in need.  (Crisp & Turner, 2007)

'adolescents spent about 75 per cent of their waking time with other people' (Larson, Csikszentmihalyi and Graef -1982)

I believe this was true with me as I was growing up.  I belonged to a lot clubs outside of school and I also went to school half an hour away from where I live so I knew a lot of people.  This meant that I was always talking and spending a lot of time with people my own age.  I do think it was beneficial to spend time with different people as I gained experience by learning about other people..

Socially is essential in networking. Growing up I seem to have lost connect with people and my network has got smaller but I feel that the friends I am close to will always support me and help me whenever I need it. I do need to improve my professional network as I am not close with many friends in the industry.  I am a bit unsure how to do this as I hardly go to auditions anymore (due to financial needs) and even if I did go to an audition, if you don't know anyone I've found that you don't talk to anyone or to talk to someone and they clearly don't want to talk to you.

Theory of Connectivity 

Social Constructionism 
Through social interaction people can gain experiences and find meanings of the world.  By finding these meanings we can find our preferred ways of engaging networks.

As a fairly recent graduate, social networking is essential to finding out about auditions and jobs.  I hope that in the future, the more work I get the more people I get to know that I get a wider network of people.

From working at a school I have got to know people who are in the field that I may see myself doing in the future.  From talking to various teachers and teaching assistant I have learnt a lot about how much time and effort the school has to put in, in order for it to run smoothly.  I am still uncertain if this is what I want to spend my life doing as I love the theatre far too much to give it up.

Connectivism 

Connectivism is a theory about learning influenced by ideas about the organisation of learning and information with special reference to the spread of the internet. (Reader 3)
Connectivisim shows how we learn from other networks and also suggests the original way of learning (by passing on information to each other)  It can be used as a professional network where individuals interact and learn. 

Blogging is a great way to stay connected especially on this BAPP course as it allows people to stay in contact and give each others opinions.  The learning process starts as an individual and then grows from meeting people in different places.

Here are some significant trends in learning:

• Many learners will move into a variety of different, possibly unrelated fields over the course of their lifetime.
• Informal learning is a significant aspect of our learning experience. Formal education no longer comprises the majority of our learning. Learning now occurs in a variety of ways – through communities of practice, personal networks, and through completion of work-related tasks.
• Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime. Learning and work related activities are no longer separate. In many situations, they are the same.
• Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains. The tools we use define and shape our thinking.
• The organization and the individual are both learning organisms. Increased attention to knowledge management highlights the need for a theory that attempts to explain the link between individual and organizational learning.
• Many of the processes previously handled by learning theories (especially in cognitive information processing) can now be off-loaded to, or supported by, technology.
• Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed).

Principles of connectivism:

• Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
• Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
• Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
• Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
• Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
• Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill. 
• Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities. 
• Decision-making is itself a learning process. Choosing what to learn and the meaning of incoming information is seen through the lens of a shifting reality. While there is a right answer now, it may be wrong tomorrow due to alterations in the information climate affecting the decision.

Communities of Practice

"A community of practice is a set of relations among persons, activity, and world, over time and in relation with other tangential and overlapping communities of practice.  A community of practice is an intrinsic condition for the existence of knowledge, not least because it provides the interpretive support necessary for making sense of its heritage". (Lave, J and Wegner, E. 1991).

Wenger identified a community of practice as existing on three dimensions:

• What it is about – its joint enterprise as understood and continually renegotiated by its members;
  
• How it functions - mutual engagement that bind members together into a social entity;
  
• What capability it has produced – the shared repertoire of communal resources. 
  

This is based on shared opinions and focuses more on interaction. It is a social practice and is normally connected with specific social groups i.e. people with similar interests.


References:

Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age - George Siemens 2004-12-12


Preface - Robert Axelrod

Affiliation and attraction - Richard J. Crisp, Rhiannon N. Turner

Constructionism: the making of meaning - Michael Crotty

Legitimate peripheral participation in communities in practice - Jean Lave, Etienne Wenger