The faculty's job is to transmit information and the student's job is to memorize and then recall it. Thus, students are passive recipients of knowledge and the faculty own the knowledge. This assumption is based on the old paradigm popularized by John Locke. Untrained student mind is regarded as a blank sheet of paper waiting for the instructor to write on. Student minds are viewed as empty vessels into which instructors pour their knowledge and wisdom.
Many faculty members consider the old paradigm the only alternative.
Lecturing while requiring students to be passive, silent, isolated, and in competition with each other seems the only way to teach. However, college teaching is changing. Students do not passively accept knowledge from the instructor or curriculum. They activate their schemata or existing cognitive structures or construct new ones to subsume the new input. Many potential benefits arise when cooperative learning is used in college instruction.