Beyond DICE: Rethinking When and Why Mixed Reality Transforms Learning

When Jeremy Bailenson, head of Stanford's Virtual Human Interaction Lab, introduced the DICE framework, he provided the VR industry with something it desperately needed: a clear decision-making tool for when virtual reality makes sense. 

DICE, standing for Dangerous, Impossible, Counterproductive, or Expensive and rare, has become the go-to framework for justifying VR investments, particularly in corporate training environments.

And for good reason. 

DICE works brilliantly for skills-based training scenarios. Firefighters practice dangerous rescues without risk. Medical students perform impossible surgeries on virtual patients. Pilots train for rare emergency scenarios that would be too expensive to recreate. 

The framework has guided countless successful VR implementations across industries.

But here's the challenge: education isn't just training.

While DICE has found its footing in vocational programs and STEM skills development, something feels incomplete when we try to apply it to the broader landscape of learning. 

What about the middle school student grappling with abstract mathematical concepts? The literature class diving into character motivation? The history students debating the causes of historical conflicts?

Where DICE Works Well

DICE shines in scenarios that mirror its original training-focused conception. In educational contexts, this translates beautifully to:

• Dangerous: Chemistry labs where students can experiment with volatile reactions safely

• Impossible: Time travel to ancient civilizations or journey inside the human body

• Counterproductive: Dissecting virtual specimens instead of harming live animals

• Expensive/Rare: Field trips to distant locations or access to expensive laboratory equipment

These applications have real value and represent important use cases for educational XR. But they also reveal the framework's constraints. DICE assumes that the primary value of virtual reality lies in simulating experiences that can't or shouldn't happen in reality. This simulation-centric view, while powerful, only scratches the surface of what mixed reality (MR) can do for learning.

The deeper issue becomes apparent when we consider the fundamental differences between training and education. 

Training typically focuses on developing specific, measurable skills or behavioral responses. Education, especially K-12 education, is far more complex: it's about building conceptual understanding, developing critical thinking, fostering creativity, and nurturing social-emotional growth.

The DICE Gaps in Educational Contexts

While DICE offers a powerful lens for evaluating high-stakes training scenarios, it begins to falter when applied to the kinds of learning environments teachers navigate every day. The real limitation isn’t the quality of the framework—it’s the assumption that simulation alone is the highest value immersive learning can offer.

In K–12 classrooms, most learning challenges aren’t about danger or cost. They’re about abstraction and engagement. Students struggle to visualize systems, relate new concepts to prior knowledge, and develop confidence through social interaction. These are not problems DICE was designed to solve.

A few key gaps emerge:

• Conceptual Understanding: DICE doesn’t account for how MR can make abstract concepts—like magnetic fields, algebraic systems, or grammatical structures—feel tangible and manipulable in shared space.

• Collaborative Reasoning: The framework doesn’t address the deeply social nature of learning. Students learn best when they can discuss, debate, and build understanding together—something MR supports far better than isolated VR experiences.

• Identity and Context: DICE assumes a user enters a simulation to “become someone else” (e.g., a firefighter, a surgeon). But in classrooms, it’s often more important that students remain themselves, in familiar contexts, as they explore new ideas.

• Teacher Facilitation: VR often sidelines the teacher. But effective classroom learning depends on real-time feedback, redirection, and support. MR makes it possible for educators to remain present and in control, rather than removed from the experience.

In other words, DICE doesn't fail—it just stops short. It can't capture the full range of pedagogical benefits that MR enables when learning is about more than just technical skill acquisition.

A New Framework for Educational Mixed Reality

To guide schools and educators beyond the limits of DICE, we propose an expanded lens—one rooted in learning science rather than simulation logic.

Instead of asking “Is this experience dangerous, impossible, counterproductive, or expensive?”, schools should ask:

• Does this deepen conceptual understanding?
  MR should enable students to see and manipulate ideas, not just experience alternate realities. When concepts become spatial, they also become more meaningful and memorable.

• Does this create opportunities for collaborative thinking?
  The best MR scenarios allow students to co-construct knowledge—discussing, testing, and negotiating their ideas in a shared spatial canvas.

• Does this support the teacher’s role as a facilitator?
  Rather than displacing instruction, immersive tools should give teachers new ways to observe student thinking, offer feedback, and orchestrate learning moments.

• Does this respect the learner’s real-world identity and context?
  Students shouldn't need to “become” someone else in a fictional space. MR lets them explore ideas within their own environment, anchoring learning in personal relevance.

We call this approach Contextual Mixed Reality—experiences that amplify what already works in the classroom while opening new ways for students to interact, imagine, and internalize. It’s not about replacing lessons with simulations, but reframing lessons with spatial, interactive, and collaborative depth.

Real-World Applications: How Reframe Goes Beyond DICE

At Reframe, we've witnessed firsthand how mixed reality's educational potential extends far beyond traditional DICE applications. 

In our partner classrooms, we see students using XR not just to simulate impossible experiences, but to think differently about familiar concepts.

Consider a geometry lesson where students manipulate 3D shapes in space - not because it's dangerous, impossible, counterproductive, or expensive to use physical shapes, but because the MR environment allows for spatial reasoning and collaborative problem-solving that simply isn't possible with traditional tools. 

This illuminates a crucial insight: the most powerful educational applications of mixed reality often don't fit the DICE framework at all. 

They're not about recreating dangerous, impossible, counterproductive, or expensive scenarios. They're about fundamentally enhancing how students engage with ideas, collaborate with peers, and construct understanding.

What makes these applications particularly powerful is how they preserve the essential social dynamics of classroom learning. Unlike individual VR experiences that isolate learners, MR in educational contexts maintain the collaborative nature of learning while adding new dimensions of interaction and understanding.

Our experience working with teachers has shown us that the most impactful XR implementations don't replace good pedagogy, they amplify it. They take what teachers already know works and add new layers of engagement, understanding, and collaboration to the student experience.