To subscribe to a forum:
Go to the top of the forum. Toward the right, you'll see a "forum tools" pulldown menu. Choose "Subscribe to this forum".
You can receive notifications daily or weekly. If you subscribe to individual threads, you can be notified instantly.
There is no user-selectable way to subscribe to an entire forum and receive instant notification of new posts. You can subscribe to individual threads to receive instant notification.
It is possible for a user to be notified instantly of any activity in a forum if an administrator adds a user's email address to the "Email addresses to notify when there is a new post" setting in the Administrator's Forum manager. If you are a forum moderator and would like to be added to this list, email staff@cs.umd.edu. We will only accomodate requests for this feature from forum moderators.