Standing on the answer: Floor Grid Voting and the unevaluated practice of physical response

Classroom response systems are a well-evidenced way of making synchronous teaching² active, but the answers students give through them are typically single choices on a screen or a simple hands up vote. A separate family of practices asks students to respond by moving: to a corner of the room, along a line on the floor, or onto a particular location in a space on the floor. These practices recur in a variety of literatures under at least ten different names; a search of three databases found only descriptive accounts and a few small studies, none of which isolates the effect of the physical response. This paper describes Floor Grid Voting (FGV), a structured two-axis version in which students stand on a floor grid, linked to a projected image with a matching grid laid over it, to answer questions whose two dimensions are both meaningful such as a map or a position on another graphic. Like earlier variants, FGV has students commit privately in writing before anyone moves, a step we treat as essential because visible physical responses invite conformity, and it treats the resulting distribution as a shared object for discussion led by the tutor. We set out the protocol in enough detail to replicate, give two worked examples from the earth sciences, discuss accessibility and psychological safety, and propose how the technique should be evaluated. No evaluation of FGV is reported here; we argue that the practice is widespread enough, and its mechanisms plausible enough, to warrant one.