The Open University are terrible at supporting anything but Microsoft stuff. They seem to treat it like some sort of virus. The Open University use a piece of software for all the communications and stuff called Firstclass Client, they don’t say too much about the software as it comes on the CD that comes with the courses. What they failed to tell you is that it is cross platform! Thats right Mac OS X / Linux / Windows. As of version 8.3 I think it’s also a Universal Binary application so that means that both PowerPC and Intel are supported native.

Once you have downloaded and installed the Firstclass Client it will be missing the server settings for the Open Uni, I guess you could call up the OU computing help desk and get the details or you can use a Windows box to get the details. Just load up Firstclass and when the login in panel comes up click “Setup” and then just copy the server address your-course-server-here .open.ac.uk.

The user interface is the same on all platforms so the OU help desk should be able to help you if your really stuck. It would be pretty interesting to know how many OU people are using other platforms. If you come across this leave me a comment.

Download you flavour here! http://www.intl.firstclass.com/downloads/Clients

Here are some other OU posts I wrote recently, they might help someone out. I need to update the second one a bit.

BlueJ on Mac OS X for the Open University
Open University Computing Information For Mac Users