Stefano Colafranceschi
Educational resources for computing, systems, and scientific visualization
Foundational course for first-year students
A structured overview of how computers work and the basic operations every student should be able to perform. The course covers mental models of computing, navigation, files & folders, storage, processes & memory, system monitoring, daily maintenance, networking & VPN, security, and applied troubleshooting scenarios.
Interactive exercises for practicing everyday computer tasks.
Immersive apps for exploring science, nature, and systems
Some subjects are hard to teach from a page: the structure of matter, the inner workings of a cell, thousands of years of landscape history, the feedback loops that drive complex systems. These augmented- and virtual-reality apps bring them into the student’s own space, where they can be explored from every angle instead of only read about.
Build atoms from the fundamental particles up
A virtual-reality game in which players assemble atoms piece by piece from the fundamental building blocks of particle physics. Hands-on construction turns abstract ideas about the structure of matter into something students can see, handle, and remember.
The valley’s nature and society, from the Ice Age to the 20th century
An immersive journey through the history of the Shenandoah Valley, JMU’s home. The app reconstructs the valley’s landscapes, ecosystems, and human communities across more than ten thousand years, from the last Ice Age to the twentieth century. Students watch the land, its wildlife, and the people who lived here change era by era, and see how nature and society shaped each other along the way.
A working cell with live biochemical reactions
Virtual Bio places a functioning cell in the room with the student. Instead of a static textbook diagram, the cell is alive with activity: biochemical reactions unfold as students watch, and the cell can be explored from any angle to see where each process takes place and how the parts work together to keep it running.
System modeling in three dimensions
System dynamics models — stocks, flows, and feedback loops — are usually drawn as flat diagrams. AR System Dynamics lifts them into three dimensions, so students can watch quantities accumulate and drain and see feedback loops drive growth, decline, or balance. The result is an engaging, intuitive feel for how complex systems behave over time.
Visualize resonance, zero, first and second order responses interactively
Tool for visualizing and calculating zero-, first-, and second-order responses of dynamic systems. Originally developed for the ISAT 300 course to help students develop intuition for system behavior under different damping and forcing conditions.
Uncertainty computation & visualization
Interactive tool for computing and visualizing measurement uncertainty given standard deviations and related parameters. Developed for ISAT 300 to support quantitative reasoning about experimental data and error propagation.
