Flat world and Cooperative Learning

Another idea observed by Thomas L. Friedman was the idea of flattening of hierarchies. Organizations will be structured horizontally and not vertically as they were in the 20th Century. If I accept this premises therefore I should accept that students need more cooperative learning exercises. However this assumes that they come to my class with a set of tools and will pick up the important concepts.
I have observed a Macroeconomics class of a colleague who uses group activities to teach macroeconomics. Each group was responsible for a section of the chapter that was being studied. The day I served as substitute teacher they were studying fiscal policy. I noticed most of these students did not understand the difference between Nominal and Real GDP. I asked if they had covered this topic and a group in the corner raised their hand. They informed me that they had talked about it 2 weeks ago. I asked if anybody else remembered what this group had talked about. There was a deafening silence. They understood the group dynamics and how to get their groups work on fiscal policy. Was this bad design? Or is it that students concentrate on their bit of work and do not pay attention to other groups presentations? Trade leads to specialization, so were students behaving economics predicted? Does specialization lead to a narrow viewpoint? The students behaved that way in this class.