Students unsubscribed from forums

Students unsubscribed from forums

by Diane Durney -
Number of replies: 7

Hi all

I have set up 2 courses with 1 x news forum, 1 x class discussion forum and weekly forums. We have a course with 159 students divided into 6 groups and we use groups and groupings. Students are contacting me stating that they are unsubscribed from the weekly forums, therefore receiving no email notifications. The class discussion and weekly forums are set to Auto Subscribe

I have also set up several other courses with 1 x news forum, 1 x class discussion forum and assignment forums (no groups or groupings).

The class discussion and weekly forums are set to Auto Subscribe. I have had no complaints from students stating that they are unsubscribed from any forums.

I've attached a shot of what the settings are for the groups and groupings for the class discussions and the weekly forums as these are the only differences in the settings.

In the interim I have asked students to subscribe to the forums as they enter a new one but is there something I can do to resolve this. I do not want to make all the forums forced subscription if I don't have to.

Diane






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In reply to Diane Durney

Re: Students unsubscribed from forums

by Richard Oelmann -
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Its not really relevant how many are in the class as a whole when you have an access restriction set for a particular grouping. The Class forum is only actually visible to the Grouping identified in the Access Restriction rule - presumably the 23 students mentioned in the second screenshot (the forum for that grouping) are the 23 students who are showing as subscribed as that is the grouping that matches the restrict access rule (Get rid of the access restriction if this is actually a whole class forum).

And for the second one - again if you are going to restrict access based on the grouping, there is no real need to use groupings above as well. The others can't see it or access it anyway. But I would almost guarantee that the issue is not down to students being unenrolled from the module for any other reason than the membership of the group and incorrect group settings for your forums (change the second one to no groups too as you are using the access restriction anyway).

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In reply to Diane Durney

Re: Students unsubscribed from forums

by Andrew Lyons -
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Hi Diane,

From what I can see your group and grouping settings look correct - I disagree with Richard's comment. Depending on your class arrangement this may or may not be necessary but I don't think that its current value at this time has anything to do with the issue you're reporting here. In fact I don't believe that the course completion settings have anything to do with subscription at all.

Can you try toggling one of the forums from Automatic subscription to Optional subscription and then back to Automatic subscription.

When a forum is changed to Automatic subscription we subscribe all potential subscribers in the forum.

Alternatively if you navigate to Forum administration -> Show/edit current subscribers you should be able to Turn editing on (top right corner) and add users.

I'm not quite sure how you've gotten to this state though - I can't replicate it myself.

Any enrolled user with the mod/forum:allowforcesubscribe capability will always be subscribed to the forum, regardless of group, grouping, or completion state.

Andrew

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In reply to Andrew Lyons

Re: Students unsubscribed from forums

by Diane Durney -

Hi Andrew

I've changed one of the forum to optional and back and it now has the correct number of subscribers. I'm going to try and avoid adding subscribers manually .

And I'm not sure how I got to this state either - have to love technology. 

Thank you

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In reply to Andrew Lyons

Re: Students unsubscribed from forums

by Richard Oelmann -
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Hmmm - thanks for that clarification Andrew.

I'm not entirely sure, and what you suggest isn't really logical to me, but could well be how it works in reality

'When a forum is changed to Automatic subscription we subscribe all potential subscribers in the forum' - yes, but logically, if an access restriction is set such as a grouping, then the members of that grouping are the potential subscribers, not the entire class. If the entire class is added as subscribers, how then does Moodle diferentiate when forum messages are sent out to subscribers - my understanding is that they are sent to all subscribers, but surely with an access restriction in place, that should only be those matching the access restriction.

If all the members of the class are added to the list of subscribers even when an access restriction in place, IMHO that is a bug and likely to cause significant confusion for users.

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In reply to Richard Oelmann

Re: Students unsubscribed from forums

by Andrew Lyons -
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Hi Richard

So the thing to remember is that some of these things change from time to time and therefore they may become a potential subscriber. Therefore they always are a potential subscriber.

Since they can't see the discussion anyway, and they won't receive it via e-mail, they don't know that they're a subscriber.

Firstly, with group membership, they are a subscriber regardless of what group they're in. Even if they aren't in a group, they're still a subscriber.

With the restrictions (e.g. grouping membership)  most of those restrictions can change at any time - things like activity completion change frequently. Therefore everyone is a potential subscriber.

Andrew

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In reply to Andrew Lyons

Re: Students unsubscribed from forums

by Richard Oelmann -
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By that logic anyone who ever becomes an authenticated user on the site should be subscribed to every forum as at some point they could 'potentially' enrol on any course! 

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