Law 8896.11/English 7888.01

Spring 2025 Wednesdays, 4:30-6:30 PM

Team-taught by: 

• Dakota Rudesill  (Moritz College of Law; Mershon National Security Simulation Director)
• Dorothy Noyes (English; Mershon Center for International Security Studies Director)

Learn teaching methods, deepen your understanding of security and governance, and burnish your CV by contributing to Ohio State's National Security Simulation!

Tabletops, war games, and role play-based training exercises are examples of  the simulations used by organizations of all kinds to train their members in decision-making, use of process, and professional skills and ethos. In the security domain, simulation scenarios inevitably draw upon established narratives of threats, opportunities, values, and identities, but can also disrupt them productively. This new course, hosted by the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, explores the theory, practice, and critique of experiential learning through simulation. The course offers an overview of organizational simulations and the accounts of narrative, performance, and pedagogy that inform them, culminating in a 2/28 international symposium on gaming and international relations. Above all, participants will learn by doing: they will produce the scenarios to be run during the Mershon Center's Autumn 2025 Ohio State National Security Simulation (the Sim).  As they collaborate on scenarios, participants will have the opportunity to consult expert practitioners in the relevant domains. They will workshop their drafts as a group and receive extensive feedback. At the conclusion of the seminar, participants are welcome but not required to take central roles on the Simulation's Game Team, finalizing and running the scenarios they have written alongside practitioner volunteers.

Previous Sims have imagined plausible, interlocking developments across great power rivalries, terrorism, climate disaster, domestic polarization and extremism, trade wars, infrastructural and cyberspace vulnerabilities, and disinformation campaigns. Practitioners working with the student-players include former officials from all branches and levels of government, retired generals and ambassadors, former Congresspeople from both parties, officers of Columbus Fortune 500 companies, and prominent journalists from the Washington Post and NPR.

The scenario seminar is open to graduate and professional school students. We are eager to recruit  students with a range of domain knowledges and international perspectives that can contribute to effective, real-world grounded scenarios for the Sim. For example, you might propose a Sim scenario that is related to your dissertation research, or in an emerging domain of security concern. 

Questions may be directed to either instructor at the emails above. For permission to enroll, Arts and Sciences and professional college students should see Prof. Noyes; law students should see Prof. Rudesill.   

Registration by permission 

• ASC students: English 7888.01, 37092, 3 credit hours
• Moritz students: Law 8896.11, 2 credit hours

The seminar will meet in 1039 Derby.

Faculty: if you are interested in Sim involvement for yourself or your undergraduates, please get in touch. A 1-credit add-on course in briefing skills will be available to undergrads participating in the Autumn 2025 Sim. We are also seeking connections to Autumn 2025 undergrad courses.