Hiding to do list items from a particular course

[nstoney]

I have added the career center as a course in Canvas.  But I don't want to see all of the career center's events that are showing up in the to do list on the dashboard; they overwhelm the real to do items from my academic courses.  Is there any easy way to hide all to do list items from a particular course other than manually deleting them as they show up in list on the dashboard?

[ProfessorBeyrer · Accepted solution]

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.

[jennawcoffee]

As a lead instructor, I copy over courses which I am not teaching. I do not want these grading reminders clogging the feed of items I actually need to grade. Is there an option for instructors?

[mlavengood]

hey I'm confused, why is there no real response here

[chriscas]

Hi @mlavengood,

The answer that @ProfessorBeyrer gave does provide an accurate description of how Cavas currently functions.  There is not a way ro exclude particular courses form the to-do list right now, but if this were submissted as an official idea, it may be considered in the future.

As a Canvas admin for my institution, I can say we have put a lot of thought over the years about what should be in Canvas and what should not, much of the disucssion happening aorund things like this.  Canvas is really first and foremost a learning management system to allow students to complete courses digially.  Canvas is flexible in that it could also be used for professional development training for teachers, for student groups/clubs, other academic centers, etc, but sometimes it may be better to house some of those extra things in a different system to avoid blending of academic content and noo-academic (like is highlighted in this post).  It's one where there is no clear right or wrong answer, just different shades of gray.

I hope this info may you out a bit more.

-Chris 

[mlavengood]

I was looking more at jennawcoffee's question, I guess. I am "instructor" for a bunch of classes because I coordinate many GTAs. Their assignments clutter up my to-do list. I am wishing I could disable their courses in my to-do list. It seems like a worthwhile option to build in.