All’s Well that Sims Well: Incorporating the Community of Inquiry Framework in an Asynchronous Graduate Level Security Studies Simulation

This paper presents a comprehensive model for integrating simulations into an asynchronous, graduate-level Security Studies course. It examines whether simulations can meaningfully engage graduate students in a fully online learning environment. We argue that simulations, particularly those developed by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), can foster holistic student engagement when paired with innovative technologies and grounded in the Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework, which emphasizes the full “educational experience. By applying the CoI model to the digital Security Studies classroom, this paper demonstrates how simulations can strengthen its three core dimensions: cognitive presence, social presence, and teaching presence. While asynchronous courses are often criticized for their limited capacity to immerse and engage students, we show that modest adaptations to CFR simulations, combined with contemporary instructional technologies, can effectively bridge the gap between distance learning and experiential education. T