Moodle provides the option to "subscribe" to discussion forums so that you will receive an email whenever someone posts a message in that forum. If you do not wish to receive these emails, you can prevent them by changing your Preferences. (See note below regarding messages sent via the Announcements forum.)

Subscribe/Unsubscribe from a Forum

To subscribe to a forum, open the forum and click on the link labeled Subscribe to forum. To unsubscribe, click on Unsubscribe from forum. See below for other methods of managing forum subscriptions.

Optional Subscriptions

By default, except for the Announcements forum, all forums are created for optional subscription, allowing individuals to choose if they wish to subscribe. For instance, you may wish to subscribe to a course Q&A forum so you will be notified when a student posts a question. (Be sure to resist replying to the email notice, however, and reply in Moodle so that all students will benefit from your response!) You may set up a forum so that everyone is subscribed without having the option to unsubscribe. This option is called Forced subscription, and we recommend using this mode sparingly—students may resent having their in-boxes filled with copies of forum posts.

Note: The Announcements forum is the one forum from which no one can unsubscribe. Everyone in the course will receive an email when you post to this forum. It's helpful to know, too, that this is not a true forum—it's one-way communication for instructors to post announcements for course participants. Students cannot reply to an Announcements forum posting.

Subscribe to a Thread

In addition to subscribing to an entire forum, you also have the option of following individual threads. Slide the selection button to the right of the post to subscribe to the thread. The button will change color to indicate that you have subscribed to it as shown below. Encourage your students to subscribe to their own threads to be notified when a classmate has replied to their post.

Manage Subscriptions

You can view a list of those subscribed to a forum by clicking on the Subscriptions tab. Select Managing subscribers to add or remove subscribers. (Note: If the forum is set for Forced subscription, editing is not an option.) This view also allows you to change the Subscription mode for the forum.

More on Personal Subscriptions

Another way to see your own subscription status is to click on Forums in the Activities block in the block drawer on the right side of your course.

You can also set your general forum preferences by selecting Preferences from the user menu associated with your user image in the top right corner of any Moodle page. Open the Forum preferences link and select the settings that you would like to be consistent from course to course.