Subscribe Feature on the Group Discussion Board

Using Blackboard’s group discussion board enables students to engage with each other. However, as discussions populate it may be hard for your students to keep track of and respond to new posts. Blackboard’s “Subscribe” feature, when enabled, allows instructors and students to sign up for automatic email alerts whenever a new post or a reply to an existing post occurred. This might be particularly useful for students to keep up with group project work. The instructor can permit subscriptions to either an entire forum or to specific threads within a forum, and decide whether the email alert will contain a link to new posts or includes the complete text of a new post. These automatic alerts ensure that subscribers no longer have to visit the discussion forum to check if new items have been posted but will be alerted right away.

This guide walks you through the following processes:

  • How to enable the Subscribe feature for group discussion forums or threads
  • How to set options for subscribers
  • How to subscribe to a discussion forum.

Groups have to already exist in your course site and the Discussion Board tool has to be enabled for each group in order to be able to follow the steps below and turn on the subscribe feature.

Note: Students decide for themselves when they want to subscribe to a forum or thread. Subscribing does not impact other users in the forum.

Step 1

First, click “Groups” in your course site menu.

Step 2

Click on a Group. For example, “Group 1”

Step 3

Once the group page opens, under “Group Tools”, click on “Group Discussion Board”

Step 4

Hover next to “Group 1” until a dropdown arrow appears. Select “Edit”

Step 5

Under “Forum settings”, select “Allow members to subscribe to threads” or “Allow members to subscribe to forums”. Click “Submit”.

Step 6

You will automatically return to the Discussion Board page. Click on ”Group 1”, which you have just updated. If you selected “Allow members to subscribe to forums”, along the top menu of the page you will now see a “Subscribe” option. (If instead you selected, select “Allow members to subscribe to threads” a thread will have to be created before you can subscribe to it). Click on “Subscribe” to enroll and automatically receive updates. You can unenroll from email updates at any time by clicking the “Unsubscribe” button.

Note: Neither students nor instructors can respond to discussion posts via email. To reply they must log in to Blackboard and respond directly on the respective discussion forum.

You must repeat the above steps for all your groups.

Subscriptions to forums or threads can be enabled either when the forum is first created, or when editing the forum settings.