Yikes!! "Unsubscribe from notification emails" in the March 2025/20.25.03 release notes
If the new "Unsubscribe from notification emails" function works as described, there is going to be a faculty uprising on my campus!
Currently, faculty post critical timely announcements in Brightspace with the confidence that the information is also sent out via email. From what I understand from the release notes, if a student receives even one email notification from any course, past or current, there will be an unsubscribe link, which will disable ALL notifications from ALL notification types in ALL classes… Forever! (Or until they manually log back in to re-configure their notification settings, which isn't likely). Is this how the unsubscribe link function works? I hope I'm misinterpreting the information.
I understand that this was implemented so that "users without access to Brightspace may have continued receiving notifications" from classes they're no longer taking, but this directly impacts students currently taking classes who need important communications. In addition to announcements, this also means they'll never again receive emails reminding them of assignments due in 48 hours. Does this update also disable all notifications in Pulse?
I strongly disagree with the determination that this is a "slight impact to instructors and learners." We need the ability to enable/disable this "feature" depending on how our institutions utilize Brightspace. All of our courses are generated with end dates, which automatically stop notifications, so this isn't solving a problem - it's creating one!
Please put a pause on implementing this function until D2L receives feedback from institutions!
Answers
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I have very similar concerns. I could accept it if it also introduced an option in the announcements tool to also send an email regardless of notification settings, but as described in the release notes there are a lot of unintended consequences to this one. Or perhaps if it only unsubscribed from a single class of notifications - I wouldn't want somebody getting overwhelmed with new/updated content notifications accidentally also blocking announcements for example.
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Definitely agree with both Melanie and Steve's comments. I understand the rationale for bringing this in and that it helps to ensure legislation (?) that allows users to unsubscribe from comms without need to log into the system. But the current solution is unworkable and likely to negatively impact students to miss important announcements because they've inadvertently unsubscribed from everything. I think discussion with the user community is definitely needed before implementing something like this.
