Hansen, K.Shokri-ghasabeh, M.Missingham, D.2010-08-202010-08-202009Proceedings of the 20th Annual Conference for the Australasian Association for Engineering Education, 2009: pp.684-6891876346590http://hdl.handle.net/2440/59955Postgraduate research calls for a novel contribution to the existing literature, which should be made independently by the researcher. In many institutions, the traditional approach does not encourage or promote collaboration with others as it is thought that a student of higher education should be able to function independently. This paper argues that postgraduate students could be more successful through increased collaboration with both other PhD students and their supervisor. This proposition is supported by a survey, which shows that students are highly in favour of increasing the extent of their collaboration with others. It is envisaged that collaboration should take place from the early stages of a PhD in the form of mentoring and working closely with a supervisor to the later stages, where experience enables guidance of others to more efficient methods and analysis techniques. Increased collaboration can also provide sidebenefits such as better communication and leadership skills.enCopyright © 2009 Remains the property of the author(s). The author(s) assign to AaeE and educational non-profit institutions a non-exclusive licence to use this document for personal use and in courses of instruction provided that the article is used in full and this copyright statement is reproduced. The author(s) also grant a non-exclusive licence to AaeE to publish this document in full on the World Wide Web (prime sites and mirrors) on electronic storage and in printed form within the AaeE 2009 conference proceedings. Any other usage is prohibited without the express permission of the author(s).Conference paper002009674434856