One typical way to mount the flash with the off-shoe cord is on a flash bracket. Here is a link to the Wimberly site that shows one implementation of a flash bracket.
Yes, you can mount the oc-3 off camera cord on a tripod. The part that holds the flash has a 1/4-20 threaded receptacle that can be scewed to a tripod. Just keep in mind the cord itself is fairly short.
If you need to seperate the flash from the camera more than a couple of feet you will need to buy the remote flash controller, STE-2 (IFRC), and use the builtin IR slave on the flash.