If you are "subscribed" to a discussion forum, you'll receive a copy of every discussion and reply made in the forum—that's a lot of email! While your instructor may create a forum with "forced subscription" where everyone will receive a copy of every post, most forums are set up as "optional subscription," leaving you the choice to subscribe or not. Ask your instructor if you have questions about a particular forum.

If you do not wish to be subscribed to a forum that has optional subscription, you can update your Profile and/or Forum settings. (See note below regarding messages sent by an instructor 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.

Announcements Forums

All course participants are automatically subscribed to the Announcements forum. Instructors use this forum to communicate important information about the course, so everyone in the course will receive an email when the instructor posts 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. You cannot reply to an Announcements forum posting.

Thread Subscriptions

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. We encourage you to subscribe to your own threads so you'll be notified when a classmate has replied to your posts.

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. Except for the Announcements forum, you can click on the button in the Subscribed column to change your subscription status.

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.

Bonus Tip: Set the Forum tracking option to Yes, highlight new posts for me. This setting indicates when new messages have been posted by your instructor and classmates.