Case of the Week
One case, opened to the whole platform. Post your position, read three others, and argue about the one you disagree with most.
Ungraded — nothing here touches your scoreJoin
HomeGroups & Discussions
Groups & discussions
The part that runs between the sessions.
Standing groups, topic boards and campus circles — asynchronous, ungraded, and open whenever you have twenty minutes rather than at a slot you booked a fortnight ago.
First, the confusing bit
Groups are not the same as Group Discussions
Both are in this menu and the names are almost identical, so here is the difference in three lines.
01
When it happens
Group Discussions (live, graded): A fixed sixty-minute slot you booked when you started the module.
Groups & boards (async): All week, whenever you have twenty minutes.
02
Whether it is graded
Group Discussions (live, graded): Yes — a moderator scores you and it feeds your Profile Score.
Groups & boards (async): No. Nothing here is marked, which is exactly why people say the unfinished thought out loud.
03
What it is for
Group Discussions (live, graded): Defending a position under challenge, on the record.
Groups & boards (async): Thinking out loud, asking the thing you did not want to ask in the room, and keeping momentum between sessions.
Looking for the moderated, scored sessions instead? Group Discussions is that page.
What is running
Groups and boards worth joining
A sample. New groups are created by members every week.
Placement Season
Interview debriefs, guesstimate practice and the running list of what companies actually asked this week.
Ungraded — nothing here touches your scoreJoin
Design Critique Exchange
Post work, get critique grounded in the problem, and give two critiques for every one you receive.
Ungraded — nothing here touches your scoreJoin
System Design Reading
One paper or architecture write-up a fortnight, with somebody assigned to argue against it.
Ungraded — nothing here touches your scoreJoin
Ask a Practitioner
Questions answered by people currently doing the job, with answers kept and searchable rather than scrolling away.
Ungraded — nothing here touches your scoreJoin
Campus Circles
Your college in one room — local study sessions, shared notes, and the campus leaderboard nobody admits to checking.
Ungraded — nothing here touches your scoreJoin
Three shapes
Groups, boards, circles
They differ in size and permanence, which turns out to be the thing that decides what people are willing to say.
Standing groups
Small, persistent, and tied to a track or a cohort. The same handful of people, week after week, which is what makes candour possible.
Topic boards
Open threads on a subject, searchable and kept. Good answers are pinned rather than scrolling into history.
Institution circles
Your campus in one place, including the people a year ahead of you who have already done the thing you are stuck on.
How to join one
Five steps, one of them awkward
The third. Everybody's first post is worse than they wanted it to be, and it does not matter.
01
Find one
Filter by track, stage, institution or cadence. Most people end up in two groups and one board.
02
Join or request
Open boards are immediate. Standing groups have a cap and a short request, because eight people is a group and eighty is a feed.
03
Post something imperfect
Nothing here is graded. The half-formed question is usually the most useful thing in the thread.
04
Give more than you take
Critique groups enforce a ratio; the rest rely on the norm. Both work, and the ratio exists because norms alone did not.
05
Leave cleanly
Leave any group at any time. Your posts stay unless you delete them, and nothing announces your departure.
Questions
About groups and boards
Group Discussions are the live, scheduled, graded sessions that are a pillar of the OPM Method — sixty minutes, a moderator, a scorecard. Groups and boards are asynchronous, ungraded, and run all week. Most people do both, for different reasons.
No. Nothing you post in a group or a board affects your Profile Score. That is deliberate: the moment a space is scored, people stop posting the half-formed thought that was worth posting.
Standing groups cap between eight and twenty. Boards are open. Past about twenty a group stops being a group and turns into a feed nobody reads.
Yes, on any plan. Set the track, the cadence and whether it is open or request-based. Campus partners can also create institution-wide circles.
Human moderators, against a published code of conduct, with member reports going to a person rather than to a filter. Larger groups also have volunteer moderators drawn from their own members.
Free on every planAsk the question you
Ask the question you
did not ask in the room.
Nothing here is graded, which is exactly why it is where the useful half-formed thinking happens.
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