Whenever an instructor creates a forum, they make a basic decision on subscription. Forum subscription is the process of sending emails of postings to participants. The instructor has four options:

• 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 the instructor chooses forced or subscription disabled there is nothing for a student to do.

With auto or optional subscription, students get to choose whether they want to get emails whenever someone posts a message to the forum. Just below the message field is a subscription option that controls the student's subscription for the entire forum. The default is to not subscribe. This is a recent change for the previous default which was to subscribe.

Assuming that they are allowed to, a user can change their subscription either by checking on unchecking the subscription box when creating a posting or, when in a forum, going to the Forum Administration block and clicking on the Subscribe to/Unsubscribe from this forum toggle. There is also an unsubscribe link at the bottom of the each email message you get from a forum that you are subscribed to.