Conferencing

FirstClass Conferencing

A conference can be described as a public or group mailbox, a place where users can exchange information online and where group discussions may take place on one or many topics.

Conferences, as well as containing messages posted by other users, may also contain topic specific areas known as subconferences. Messages can be addressed directly to a conference, a red flag will appear by the conference icon when it contains messages you have not yet read. You must open the conference to be able to read the messages posted into it.

The Open University's FirstClass e-mail and conferencing system contains many thousands of conferences. Some of these are open to all Open University FirstClass Users such as the OUSA study areas; some are course specific restricted access areas and some are read only notice areas such as OU Service News.

By default your FirstClass desktop will contain a standard set of public conference areas and possibly course related conferences as well.

Many conferences will have a 'Welcome', 'Spirit of Conference' or 'About this conference' message in them explaining their purpose. It will probably be the first message in the conference, so you may have to scroll down the list of messages to find it.

Guidelines and tips for communicating with other FirstClass users can be found in the Information section of this site.

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