5.1 Your academic email address
As an OU student you have an academic email address. You don’t have to use it – you can continue to use an existing email address for us to contact you so you don’t have an additional inbox to check.
If you want to get student discounts, however, you might need to supply and verify an academic email address.
The format of your academic email address will be different depending on when you completed registration on your first module with the OU.
If you completed registration on your first module on or after 16 December 2020
Your email address will be your first name and last name followed by @ou.ac.uk.
Example: firstname.lastname@ou.ac.uk
Where there is more than one student with the same name you will be allocated a number.
Example: firstname.lastname1@ou.ac.uk
You’ll have been advised of your email address in an email from the OU about general study resources when you completed registration on your first module, which will tell you if a number has been added.
If you completed registration on your first module before 16 December 2020
Your email address will be your OUCU (OU computer username) followed by @ou.ac.uk. You’ll find your OUCU on emails the OU has sent you and you might have already used it to sign in to your OU account. You can also find it in your contact details on StudentHome.
Example: xy123456@ou.ac.uk
Using your academic email address
To use this email address you’ll need to sign up to Office 365, which is another free benefit to being an OU student. You’ll find out more about this in the next section.