Employee vs. Student Accounts

Owned by LUCINDA POE
Last updated: Sept 29, 2022
3 min read

If you are both a student and an employee at OTC, your student account and your employee account can be used in different ways to access different resources. This can be confusing at times, trying to figure out which account to use to log in to or access which resource. Below, we describe how to access student and employee resources with the appropriate account.

Which is which?

  • Your employee account contains up to the first seven letters of your last name and your first initial, except in cases where this results in duplicates. For example: John Doe would have an employee user name like "doej" and Soandso Everyguy would have an employee user name like "everygus"

  • Your student account contains your initials followed by your ID number. For example: John Doe would have a student user name like "jd0123456"

In a classroom:

  • When you are in a classroom as a student, log into the computer with your student account.

  • If you log into a classroom computer using your employee account, you will not be able to access student resources

  • Resources tied to your student account may include: the S:\ drive; IT resources allocated for CIS students (SQL/TFS).

Using Canvas:

  • Whether you are using Canvas as an employee or as a student, you can only log in to Canvas using your employee account.

  • If you attempt to log in to Canvas using your student account, you will receive an error.

  • Automated emails from Canvas will be sent to your employee email account rather than your student email.

Note: When you need to use Canvas while in class, you should log into the computer with your student account, and log into MyOTC and/or Canvas using your employee account.

Note for former employees: If you used to be an OTC employee but your employment recently ended, you may receive an "account doesn't exist" error. Canvas accounts are updated at regular intervals rather than automatically at the end of employment. If you receive this error, wait until the next time of 6:30am, 11:30am, 2:30pm, or 5:30pm, and the error should be resolved.

MyOTC

  • When logging into MyOTC, always use your employee account.

Student email

  • Unfortunately, there is not currently an easy way for an OTC employee to check their student email through MyOTC. Our team is working on that.

  • To check student email, visit http://outlook.office.com/ and log in using your student account.

    • If the page automatically directs you to your employee email, click your name in the upper right hand corner and select Sign Out. Then, visit the URL again, and you should have the option to sign in using a different account.

Resetting Your Student Password

So you're a staff member who received a notice to your student email account that your student email account is going to expire. You are proactive and decide to change it before it expires. Due to having a staff account, many normal ways of resetting the password for your student account are unavailable. You will need to either wait until it expires, use PASS, or use the OTC SSO Password Reset Page. 

Employee Account Use

Please only use your employee account to sign into MyOTC or for work purposes. Do not use it for student communications or in class. The applicable policies can be found in the employee handbook.

Student-Staff Leaving Employment

Please note that typically your staff account access will expire after the last paycheck is generated. This may be retroactive if you have not worked since the last pay date before leaving employment. If your employment recently ended and you can no longer login to MyOTC, please reset your student password if you do not know it and attempt to log in with that account instead. If you receive an error similar to Could not validate the Single Sign-On user at this time, please contact the Help Desk: