You can choose what courses appear on your dashboard in Canvas:
On your dashboard, click View All Courses at top left:
To add your course to the dashboard, click the star next to a course. Orange stars show the courses have been added to the dashboard:
Starred courses will also appear on your "Courses" Menu:
You can also toggle between the dashboard's Card View (which shows course cards), List View (which shows upcoming due dates and events in all your active courses), and Recent Activity (which shows recent announcements, notifications, and discussion posts in all your courses). To do so, click the vertical ellipses button at top right of the dashboard:
Learn more about each dashboard view here. The steps in these guides apply to both students and instructors: