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.
However, let me clarify that I am not saying that all classroom activities should be done in groups. What I am saying is that group activities should be a regular and significant part of college instruction. In real life, people need to collaborate with others. In their families, on their jobs, and in their social lives, they need to be able to work with others to everyone's mutual benefit. Ironically, schools have not done enough to prepare students for this purpose.