Learning and teaching innovation is becoming more necessary in engineering, particularly with the new Engineers Australia Stage 1 Competencies and the ‘voucher’ system starting in 2012. There is also increasing pressure on academics to undertake research and publish. In Australia, a small number of groups have formed to meet these challenges and help engineering academics develop their education research practices. However while these groups have developed in and are focused on their local context, the factors that influenced their creation and support or hinder their growth have implications for similar groups in future. This paper aims to compare and contrast three such groups to identify essential elements of engineering education research groups in Australasia. Three case studies are presented from the perspective of the coordinators of the groups, along with a thematic analysis conducted across the three cases.