Thanks for the reminder, @nstoney of how events from each Canvas course are added to a user's dashboard. There is not an option to prohibit specific courses from adding to the dashboard list, and I doubt that most instructors would want their students to be able to do so. So the best option I think is to look at the to do list on each course's homepage. At least we can disable notifications on a course-by-course basis.

If you would like to pursue the option to prohibit specific courses from adding to the dashboard list, the best way to do that is to use the idea process here in the Instructure Community. Information on how to do this is on the page How do Ideas and Themes work in the Instructure Community? .

Creating an idea does not provide an immediate solution to the problem you described, though it is a solution. I’m going to mark it as such and hope that our colleagues who have a similar challenge will find the best way to contribute. If you decide to create an idea, please link it here.