Motivated by the 'shift from teaching to learning' in the European Higher Education Area, international researchers, quality assurance agencies and practitioners undertook a joint project in order to develop a new procedure for internal quality management focussing on students' competences (programme learning outcomes). The procedure consists of three steps: defining competences, screening competences and enhancing competences. An interdisciplinary team conducted a pilot study with the Postgraduate Programme Renewable Energy at Oldenburg University to validate this approach. The results lead to the conclusion that the procedure raises awareness of the study programme's quality and encourages discussions between students, faculty and academic staff. The most important contribution is to strengthen the study programme's competence profile.