Task 3b - Reader theories on networking

Reader 3 touches on five theories all related to professional networking, before this module I knew the basics of professional networking whilst studying at college and how important it was to create a large network to gain a sucessful career. It is becoming more apparent to me how true this actually is. The theories the reader focuses on are Cooperation, Affiliation, Social Constructionism, Connectivism and Communities of Practice. These words and phrases at first made no sense to me so it took me a lot of bravery and courage to set focus on this task and how to understand it, especially in the sense of what can they offer me? Using a few concepts of these theories should create 'The Networked Professional'. The session with the other BAPP arts students and Paula did make my thinking a lot clearer on some of this.

Communities of Practice
This is a concept that was first used by Lave and Wenger. Definted to us as:

'Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.'

https://www.learning-theories.com/communities-of-practice-lave-and-wenger.html

A neighbourhood to you and I would be considered a Community but by community of practice we mean people who share the same learning and knowledge as you do and come together as a community. The three charcteristics seemed vital for something to be a Community of practice are as follows....
A DOMAIN- A SHARED DOMAIN OF INTEREST
A COMMUNITY- MEMBERS ENGAGE WITH EACH OTHER (SHARED INTERESTS OF DOMAIN)
THE PRACTICE- MEMBERS OF THE COMMUNITY ARE PRACTITIONERS
During the session I mapped my communities of Practice with the help of Paula.

Affiliation
This is a concept I know I already am fairly familiar with, the creation of relationships, some people inspire me and like I mentioned in the session blog with people seperating their social and professional lives I find this quite hard to do, the line between a relationship on a professional basis and those of a social basis are hard to define and the line can waver. Especially in the arts industry Affiliation can be pretty dangerous, whereas co-operation is a little less tying. Affiliation is a friendly concept and one that in the right sense can build some great networks.

Co-operation
This is a concept I had heard of but never looked into deeply, the reader 3 suggests; ‘cooperate till maximum benefit then defect’, thus my understanding being once something has been achieved the group no longer has to cooperate, quite a selfish act but nevertheless a networking process.
Game Theory strongly links to this, an article that really helped my understanding at the level we cooperate was https://www.quantamagazine.org/20150212-game-theory-calls-cooperation-into-question/. In it is a great example of a 'tit for tat' strategy.

I find this whole theory fascinating and reading into Robert Axelrod and 'The Prisoners Dilemma' has also helped with the understanding of this concept. I think I would struggle to use Co-operation as an only way to network due to the fact I pride myself over not being a selfish person, but with Affiliation and Cooperation together in the right balance I can see how I would make a strong 'Networked Professional'.

Connectivism
In a way Connectivism takes me back to task 1b where I looked into Web 2.0 and how it has given us the opportunity for a viewer to be a creator, in order to share knowledge etc. Experience has long been considered the best teacher of knowledge and by people sharing this knowledge through online forums and blogs we then in turn learn more, previous to Web 2.0 we couldnt use the concepts of Connectivism. BAPP is a great example of just how Connectivism has an influence on our learning and networking skills.
George Siemens was the biggest originator on this theory and I watched him speaking in this youtube video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rqL_lsogeNU&feature=player_embedded. He phrases that 'structured learning is irrelevant these days'. It's an interesting watch if you get chance!
Stepehen downes also has some great slide shares on the subject http://www.slideshare.net/Downes/connectivism-and-personal-learning
http://www.slideshare.net/Downes/elements-of-connectivism

Social Constructionism
Now this for me was the hardest theory to understand and I still feel I need some extra research into what this really is. A great simple video I came across through a google search that made Social Contructionism more understandable for me was the one below.



I'm not sure whether I'm right in the theory but to me it means that because people are making something seem real through social interaction etc then it becomes real...
For example someone could have badly reviewed a product they had bought and because someone wanting to buy the product read it, it made them think badly of the product too, to me social contructionism shows that we put a lot of trust in what others say, and their experience can affect someone else who hasnt necessarily had the experience.
Because of my confusion on this theory I am going to take up some more reading on this one, any sites you have that you guys could recommend to help me understand this better would be great!

After looking into all these concepts and ideas about networking I feel already a much better understanding of the processes networking involves. Before taking this module I would have never reflected over the way I did a task, but on reflection in my private journal of how I dealt with this certain task I feel I've already set the appropriate actions in place to make myself understand in much more detail.