Readability Community News: Rodrigo Named CUES Fellow

University of Arizona

2022 CUES Distinguished Fellow
Dr. Shelley Rodrigo

Congratulations to Dr. Shelley Rodrigo, a 2022 Center for University Education Scholarship (CUES) Distinguished Fellow. CUES advances faculty scholarship and innovation in university education. Awardees receive the title CUES Distinguished Fellow and a 3-year grant for their research.

The fellowship is for Shelley’s project, “Improving Student Agency and Digital Reading for Better Learning and Academic Success,” which focuses on improving the readability of digital text by using personalized reading formats.

“I’m excited about the opportunity to work with students reading within specific systems, digital textbooks. The results of this research should not only support students and their reading; hopefully, it will also help make arguments to digital textbook distributors about the need for better designed and more consistently adaptable reading environments.”

– Dr. Shelley Rodrigo

Shelley’s early research investigated how college students could improve their reading experiences using personalized reading formats (PRFs) and Adobe Liquid Mode. She has presented her work at Adobe MAX 2020, SXSW EDU 2022, and several Adobe for Education Summits.

Congratulations, Shelley!

CUES Fellowship Program

Improving Student Agency and Digital Reading for Better Learning and Academic Success

Dr. Shelley Rodrigo, 2022 CUES Distinguished Fellow

To better navigate the increasingly large amount of digitally published texts and to feel empowered as learners, students would benefit from understanding and using personalized reading formats (PRF) which enable change to font, size, and spacing, for example.

This project proposes studying how students experience adopting and implementing PRFs within digital textbook environments. This goal addresses a high need on our campus and beyond. Indeed, according to the University of Arizona Bookstore, nearly half of undergraduate courses adopt digital textbooks through the bookstore’s inclusive access process as of Spring 2022. By focusing exclusively on the reading environment within digital textbooks, this research advances our understanding of the process of learning technology adoption and adaptation while immediately enhancing the student reading and learning experience in digital environments.

About Dr. Shelley Rodrigo: Rochelle (Shelley) Rodrigo is the Senior Director of the Writing Program; Associate Professor in the Rhetoric, Composition, and the Teaching of English (RCTE); and Associate Writing Specialist (Continuing Status) in the Department of English at the University of Arizona. She researches how “newer” technologies better facilitate communicative interactions, specifically teaching and learning. As well as co-authoring three editions of The Wadsworth/Cengage Guide to Research, Shelley also co-edited Rhetorically Rethinking Usability (Hampton Press). Her scholarly work has appeared in Computers and Composition, C&C Online, Technical Communication Quarterly, Teaching English in the Two-Year College, EDUCAUSE Quarterly, Journal of Interactive Technology & Pedagogy, Enculturation¸ as well as various edited collections. In 2021 she was elected Vice President (4-year term including President) of the National Council of Teachers of English and won the Arizona Technology in Education Association’s Ruth Catalano Friend of Technology Innovation Award, in 2018 she became an Adobe Education Leader, in 2014 she was awarded Old Dominion University’s annual Teaching with Technology Award, in 2012 the Digital Humanities High Powered Computing Fellowship, and, in 2010 she became a Google Certified Teacher/Innovator.

ABOUT CUES: The Center for University Education Scholarship (CUES) at the University of Arizona: CUES aims to catalyze the practice of educational innovation and scholarship on teaching and learning at the University of Arizona. CUES serves as a model for change and improvement in university education, by fostering exceptional scholarly experiences for faculty and staff, and positively impacting the quality of education across campus.