Manchester moves student Microsoft 365 Copilot licences to Semester Two
The September notice is a readiness announcement. In it, the university says Semester One will focus on "building understanding, confidence and readiness." Teaching and learning staff get more time to embed the university's AI in Teaching and Learning Policy, and the programme team keeps gathering feedback before wider M365 Copilot access opens to students in Semester Two. The notice says this plan followed engagement with students and colleagues over the summer.
Several details are missing. The notice does not say when in Semester Two access will expand, whether every student gets a licence at once or in groups, or which Microsoft 365 Copilot features will be switched on at Manchester. Read Semester Two as a stated plan, not a dated commitment.
The notice also argues that students lose nothing in the meantime. They already have what the university calls its "protected version" of Microsoft Copilot in the browser, plus online guidance, so the university says nothing stops them getting started at the start of the year. Whether that answers students who expected the full suite depends on the difference between the two products, covered below.
The January promise of "summer 2026" meets a semester calendar
In January, Manchester and Microsoft made much bigger claims. The university announced that it was the first university in the world to provide Microsoft 365 Copilot access and training to all students and staff. The deal would see 65,000 students, academics and colleagues benefit from the full Microsoft 365 Copilot suite, alongside training to support effective and responsible use. Microsoft's UK news site described the package as including agents such as Researcher and Analyst, and productivity apps like Word, Excel, and PowerPoint that have Copilot built in.
That announcement also set a timetable. Microsoft's UK coverage said the Microsoft 365 Copilot roll-out, to be completed by summer 2026, will give students the work-ready skills they need. BusinessCloud and UC Today repeated the summer 2026 target when they covered the deal. The university's IT Services page is less specific. It says 65,000 colleagues and students will benefit from the full Microsoft 365 Copilot suite, and that the licence rollout will be phased, with planning underway and more details to follow.
Put side by side, the two statements show the student phase has slipped. The target was the end of summer 2026. The plan is now a semester that has not started yet. The September notice gives educational reasons: policy needs to bed in, students need clear support, and feedback is still coming in. It does not mention licensing, technical or cost problems, and nothing on record points to any. The notice also says nothing about staff licences, so it tells readers nothing about how far the staff side of the rollout has got.
Manchester did have early usage evidence behind the deal. BusinessCloud reported that the programme follows a pilot between 2024 and 2025, where the university said 90% of licensed users adopted Copilot within 30 days, with around half using it several times a week. Those are the university's own figures for a licensed pilot group. They show people will use Copilot once they have it. They say little about how a first-year student should use it on assessed work, and that question is now setting the timetable.
Copilot Chat today, licensed Microsoft 365 Copilot later
The most useful clarification comes from the university's student Copilot support page, not the news item. It says Copilot Chat and Microsoft 365 Copilot are different things. Copilot Chat is the generative AI chat service students already reach by signing in with their university account. The licensed Microsoft 365 Copilot experience adds AI features inside Microsoft 365 apps, and the page names Word, Outlook and Teams as examples. The page also says students do not need a Microsoft 365 Copilot licence to use Copilot Chat.
So the Semester Two plan is about wider licensed Copilot inside the apps. It is not the first time students can use any Copilot. A student opening Copilot Chat in a browser this term has the university-supported chat service. What they wait for is Copilot working directly in their documents, email and Teams.
Signing in properly is what makes the chat service count as university-supported. IT Services tells users to log in with your University account to ensure that your conversation is protected. The student page describes what that protection covers. When Microsoft 365 is used through a university account, the university keeps control of the data. Microsoft processes it to provide and support the service and does not use university content for advertising, profiling or other secondary purposes. The page adds that Copilot works inside the existing Microsoft 365 environment and follows the same permissions and access controls.
These assurances apply only to university-account use of Microsoft 365. The support page warns that other AI tools may be self-service, may not get university technical support, and may handle information differently. It also tells students to be careful with personal, sensitive or confidential information. The same goes for pasting in other people's work, such as journal articles, book chapters, datasets or images, because copyright may apply. A student using a personal Microsoft account, or another chatbot, is outside what the university describes.
Manchester's staff messaging is broader. The September notice tells colleagues to think of Copilot "as a team rather than a single tool." It lists the chat experience, Copilot in Microsoft 365 apps, and custom agents built for particular processes as separate forms. For students, the practical distinction is simpler: chat now, in-app Copilot later.
Manchester's AI in Teaching and Learning Policy sets the pace
The Semester One pause makes more sense alongside the policy it is meant to protect. Senate approved the AI in Teaching and Learning Policy, and it took effect on 1 September 2026, according to a university notice from 1 June. Every summative assessment (work that counts toward a grade) must be given one of four AI categories. That category has to be shown to students in the assessment brief and in Canvas, the university's learning platform.
| Category | What students may do, per university guidance |
|---|---|
| AI Prohibited | No AI use for the assessment. |
| AI Minimal | Limited use for presentation, such as grammar, fluency or formatting, without changing the student's ideas, arguments or conclusions. |
| AI Permitted | AI may be used to complete the assessment within the limits set in the brief. |
| AI-Integrated | AI use is required to meet the assessment's learning outcomes. |
Academic staff choose the category for each assessment. The policy calls this a shared language rather than a set of rules, so the same Copilot feature could be banned in one module and required in another. The June notice asked teaching staff to categorise their existing assessments and update Canvas before term started. It said AI-Integrated assessments should be "a very small minority," used only where they already fit the learning outcomes. It also made clear that the categorisation exercise did not require changes to learning outcomes, programme amendments or course-unit specifications for September.
This explains the timing, although the connection is our reading and the university has not spelled it out. Licensed Microsoft 365 Copilot puts AI inside Word and Outlook, where students write their assessed work. The university has promised to review how the policy works in practice after Semester One, with findings going to the October 2026 Academic Quality and Standards Committee. Rolling out in-app Copilot to tens of thousands of students before that first review would mean giving them the tool before the rules for using it had been tested. Holding back until Semester Two gives the categories a term of real use first.
The student guidance also puts responsibility on the student. Students must check the assessment brief and Canvas before using AI on assessed work. They must follow any instructions on declaring or referencing AI use, and they stay responsible for what they submit. AI use is optional except in AI-Integrated assessments. Even then, the guidance says, not every kind of AI use is acceptable.
What Semester One is for: pop-ups, a bigger Student Advisory Group and peer universities
The September notice lists several activities for this term. The university has made a responsible-use video for students and staff to sit alongside existing guidance. It says it will continue targeted communications with the people who support students day to day, naming academic staff, Library staff and student-facing teams. Those groups are likely to get most of the questions when licences arrive.
Pop-ups and campus events are planned for students and staff during Semester One, so people can ask questions, try Copilot Chat and give feedback. The notice gives no dates, venues or schedule. The university is also expanding its Student Advisory Group to bring in a wider range of student views and help shape preparations for the wider rollout. It is also sharing practice with other universities rolling out Copilot to staff and students, though it does not name them.
These are planned activities, not results. The notice reports no consultation findings, and it does not say what, if anything, the Student Advisory Group has changed so far. Student opinion is not settled either. In March, the student newspaper The Mancunion reported that opinions on campus are mixed about its use. The expanded advisory group and campus events are where those views can shape the programme before licences go out.
The student support page already acts as a triage guide, which should make the extra questions this term easier to handle:
- For sign-in, access or technical problems with Copilot Chat, students should go through the student sign-in and access checks, then contact IT help and support.
- For whether AI can be used on a piece of assessed work, students should check the assessment brief and the unit's Canvas information first, then ask the Unit Lead or teaching team.
- For help using AI in learning, checking information, academic integrity or referencing, students should use the Library's generative AI guidance.
- If a student doesn't know where a question belongs, their Student Support Hub can point them to the right service.
This split is useful. It keeps "I can't sign in" away from "am I allowed to use this?" Those questions have different owners, and mixing them up is how students end up with wrong answers about academic integrity from a help desk.
What this means for you
If you are a Manchester student, you don't need to wait for anything to start. Your decision this term is how to use Copilot Chat on each piece of work, and the category on your assessment brief now answers that. For IT and academic leaders at other institutions, Manchester's revised timetable is a working example of licensing that goes at the speed of policy, not the speed of procurement.
The support guidance lists suitable learning uses for the chat service now: exploring a topic, getting a hard concept explained another way, making practice questions, and revisiting or organising notes you have already written. It also suggests asking yourself whether using AI would replace learning the task is meant to build. It warns that Copilot's answers can be inaccurate, incomplete, made up or biased, so check important claims and sources yourself.
For administrators elsewhere, the lesson we draw, not one Manchester states, is in the communications. Manchester's support page answers "Is Copilot Chat the same as Microsoft 365 Copilot?" directly. That heads off the likely confusion when an institution has promised "Copilot for everyone" but only the free chat tier is live. A clear distinction between licence tiers in user-facing guidance will prevent many support tickets.
- Manchester students can use university-supported Copilot Chat now by signing in with their university account; no Microsoft 365 Copilot licence is needed.
- Wider licensed Microsoft 365 Copilot for students, which adds AI inside apps such as Word, Outlook and Teams, is planned for Semester Two, with no specific date announced.
- The January target of completing the 65,000-person rollout by summer 2026 has, for students, moved to Semester Two.
- Every summative assessment now carries one of four AI categories (Prohibited, Minimal, Permitted or Integrated), shown in the assessment brief and on Canvas.
- The university's data-control assurances cover Microsoft 365 used through a university account, not personal accounts or third-party AI tools.
- A review of the AI in Teaching and Learning Policy after Semester One will feed into the October 2026 Academic Quality and Standards Committee, and that review is the most likely point where the rollout approach could be adjusted.
Manchester's world-first claim hasn't been withdrawn, but the student phase now depends on how well its assessment framework works in practice, not on its contract with Microsoft. The next concrete milestone is the policy review going to the October 2026 Academic Quality and Standards Committee. After that, the university's own schedule points to Semester Two. That is when Copilot will appear inside the Word documents and Outlook inboxes where Manchester students do their assessed work, and when the four categories on every assessment brief will be tested properly.