Driven by questions about whether final-year project work truly facilitates autonomous learning, we conducted a pilot study to examine whether collaborative learning could challenge authority-dependence in a small sample of final-year psychology students (N = 20). We observed student engagement in six structured collaborative learning sessions and collected students' evaluation of them with regards to how useful the sessions were to them and the extent to which they felt able to contribute. Findings indicate that students benefited from the general support afforded by the group and were willing to learn from each other, except when faced with uncertainty about reliability of peer advice or with unequal contributions from group members. Notably, students were defensive about research decisions made with their project supervisor. This study offers tentative evidence that collaborative learning can address student anxieties about independent work, but that it does not necessarily challenge authority-dependence.
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