Subscribing to a Moodle Discussion Forum results in notifications being sent to a user when there are responses posted to that forum.
These notifications are sent in one of the following ways:
- As individual notifications (one notification for every post)
- As a daily digest (only one notification sent every day which contains all of the posts)
- As a daily digest with just subjects (only one notification sent every day, containing only the subject heading and not the content of the posts)
These options are found and changed under any user's profile settings.
As a teacher in a course shell, you're automatically subscribed to any forum you add to your course shell, but you can choose to unsubscribe by clicking on the "Unsubscribe me from this forum," in the settings block.
Whether or not a student is subscribed depends on the settings of a particular forum.
There are 4 subscription mode options in a forum's settings:
- Optional subscription - Participants can choose whether to be subscribed
- Forced subscription - Everyone is subscribed and cannot unsubscribe
- Auto subscription - Everyone is subscribed initially but can choose to unsubscribe at any time
- Subscription disabled - Subscriptions are not allowed.
If you want to be sure announcements reach all students, then you should have that forum set to forced subscription. However, this only takes effect with new students added after the setting has been set to forced and not students who are already enrolled in a course.