I was having the same issue and I found a solution that worked for me once. Maybe it will for you, too. When there is a red dot next to an item on the dashboard, it isn't sufficient to just view the entry in the dashboard. There is something *inside the course* that is marked as red, too.
I'll try it again with the second of my 3 red dots, making screenshots along the way.
Starting point:
Today is 9/18/2020, so this is "new activity" from a month ago that won't clear.
I click on the name of the course, "Computer Hardware Lab" and unfortunately nothing useful is shown. So I have to click around the categories in the course to find something pending. (There may be a faster way, but I only just now figured this out.)
There was nothing interesting in Home, Announcements, Syllabus, or Modules. In Discussions I saw red:
I clicked into the discussion and hovered over each of the red-dotted discussion entries to clear the red dots in each discussion item.
Hmm, still a red dot next to the whole section. Maybe click the Q&A?
Yes, that did it. Now let's check the dashboard.
I still have that "New Activity" tag, but there were two red-dotted courses up above and I only worked on one. Let's check it.
Success! I cleared the second one. I hope you find this helpful.
Daniel
Thank You
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