Moodle with Melinda - Forum Tracking & Subscriptions

Happy Monday, fellow Moodlers!

Let’s look more closely at the forum tracking and subscriptions in Moodle. 

First, what are they & how are they different?  Both the tracking and subscription help in notifying Moodle users when there are new forum postings they have not read.  The tracking notifies within the Moodle course; while the subscription sends out emails to the user.  Let’s look at each individually:

Tracking:
Pros-no clogging up your email
Cons-if you go into a forum and accidentally leave without actually reading all the new posts, it “unmarks” the unread posts so you would need to look at the individual timestamps to know the newest posts

There are 2 steps to go through to make sure that tracking is set up correctly for you.
1.    Go to your profile & click on the Edit Profile tab; click the Show Advanced button; scroll down to Forum tracking and make sure that “Yes: highlight new posts for me” is selected in the drop down list
(if you don’t want tracking or want to turn it off select “No: don’t keep track of posts I have seen”)

2.    In the Moodle course, click on the forum you want to track and in the upper right of the screen click on the link “Track unread posts;” this will work for any forum that has tracking as optional in its settings.

If you are the “Teacher” of a course, you can force tracking by changing the settings of the forum for Read tracking for this forum? from Optional to On.

Subscriptions:
Pros-if you don’t visit the course very often, you are notified of new posting via email
Cons-if the forum is active it can clog up your email very quickly

Again, there are 2 ways to setup subscriptions, but also more choices in each:

1. Auto-subscribing to all forums: Go to your profile & click on the Edit Profile tab; click the Show Advanced button; scroll down to Forum auto-subscribe and select “Yes: when I post, subscribe me to that forum”
   (If you don’t want to be auto-subscribed pick “No: don’t automatically subscribe me to forums”; you can still pick to subscribe to individual forums.)
   Another choice in your profile right above the Forum auto-subscribe is Email digesting (blue arrow above).  This lets you select how often you are sent emails with new posts.  You can choose between:
• No digest (single email per forum post)
• Complete (daily email with full posts)
• Subjects (daily email with subjects only) 
This gives you some control over the number of emails filling your inbox.
2. In the Moodle course, in order to subscribe to a specific forum click on the forum you want to subscribe to and in the upper right of the screen click on the link “Subscribe to this forum;” this will work for any forum that has Subscribing as optional in its settings.
   
   
   If you are the “teacher” in a course, you can set the subscription option for individual forums in your course.  It is the option Force everyone to be subscribed? in the Forum setup.  The options are:
   
   1. No (initially individuals are not subscribed, but they can turn it on if they wish)
   2. Yes, forever (all participants are forced to subscribe)
   3. Yes, initially (initially individuals are subscribed, but they can turn it off if they wish)
   4. Subscriptions are not allows (no one can subscribe to that forum)

There is another way to turn on and off both subscriptions and tracking when in a course.  If you are in a forum, click on the Forum activity in the navigation bar (breadcrumb trail) to show all forums for that course.  This will list all the forums and let you select which ones to Track & Subscribe, as longs as the creator of the course has enabled these options.

Hopefully this will help you take control of your forums!