Internal quality management in competence-based higher education – An interdisciplinary pilot study conducted in a postgraduate programme in renewable energy.

Highlights: • An innovative procedure for internal competence-based quality management has been developed. • The pilot study shows that competence-based evaluation raises awareness of a programme's quality. • It encourages invaluable discussions and strengthens the programme's competence profile. • Especially for social/personal competences, the procedure helps to clarify the programme's goal. Abstract 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]