What's the different between the Canvas Inbox and my school email?

Students have both an inbox within Canvas and an email address that is assigned to them when they apply to the college. While they may appear to be the same, there are differences. 

Canvas Inbox: While not technically email, many aspects resemble email for ease of use. Canvas Inbox is an internal messaging system directly within Canvas. Some instructors will prefer to communicate directly within Canvas for its ease of use and so that communications with students are well documented. As an educational institution, we are required to maintain contact with enrolled students, and communicating with students in Canvas helps document this in case we're audited. One of the downside to this system is that it's internal only, meaning you can't send an email to someone outside of Canvas and someone can't send an email to your Canvas Inbox. It's strictly a messaging service inside of Canvas, much like a bank might message you inside their online banking portal. In the online banking example, many times you'll also get notified by email (an email of your choice) that you have a message waiting in your online banking portal. In Canvas, you can set your notification settings to your liking but, by default, you should be getting notified to your default email (more on that later) as soon as messages come into the Canvas Inbox. Within your notification settings, you can also add another email or even a phone number for text notifications so that you're notified via the method of your choice. Another downside is that instructors can't message students in a course through the inbox until the course is published which may only occur the day the course starts.

Student Gmail: Once students apply to the college they're automatically assigned a student Gmail account. This is their official email account for the college and it reflects their MyCCC username. For example, Martin Luther King Jr.'s username might be mking3 and his school email would then be mking3@student.cccd.edu. Numbers are assigned at the end of usernames for those that appear more than once. All official emails from Coastline are sent to Dr. King Jr.'s school email account which he can access at gmail.cccd.edu. Emails such as registration reminders, Financial Aid notices, Canvas notifications, etc. are sent to this email by default. We always recommend that students communicate with our college and faculty via their school email. This helps us verify a student’s identity as well as protect student information in accordance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA [like HIPAA but for the educational setting]). Since anyone can create an email account in anyone's name, personally identifiable information will not be sent to personal emails and will only be sent to a student's school email. Instructors who chose to communicate with their students can get their student's email addresses at any time via course rosters. This includes the student's personal email however, since emails may contain personally identifiable information, the school email is often used. Since there are restrictions on the Canvas Inbox, some instructors will choose to use the school email to communicate with students, especially before courses start. Many students feel that another email box to manage is too burdensome and so they forward their school email to a personal email account so they don't have to check another account.