You may or may not know that the CVT transmission in the Rogue is shared with the Versa, Altima, Maxima, Murano, etc..
Here is a great thread in NICO's Altima forum about using the manual mode to it's fullest potential. *Note.. Some ideas in this thread are terrible.. so it may well serve to teach you how NOT to use the manual mode... lol.. but other members help clarify which input is good and which is bad.
zerothread?id=292238