Carnegie and SRI Education presented a webinar for networked improvement communities on identifying and refining high leverage problems to select National Science Foundation (NSF) grantees. The webinar was offered by NSF INCLUDES, a comprehensive initiative to enhance U.S. leadership in science and engineering discovery and innovation by proactively seeking and effectively developing science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) talent from all sectors and groups in our society. By facilitating partnerships, communication, and cooperation, NSF aims to build on and scale up what works in broadening participation programs to reach underserved populations nationwide.

The webinar was the second in a series focused on a core set of closely related issues at the heart of any collective impact or networked improvement community effort. This webinar addressed techniques that (1) demonstrate how improvers can come to understand the problems that locals see and feel, (2) explore the systems that give rise to those problems, and (3) begin to see how to map, and identify, the significant work processes that constitute those systems. Taken together, these activities help network improvement community members recognize and analyze high leverage problems. Watch the video here.