At the moment, there is still no list of independent eLearning consultants. And the German eLearning hand-book (cf. China 2002) that is available contains a somewhat obsolete overview of eLearning consultants. Some good places to look, however, when searching for such consultants are associations like D-ELAN (German Network of eLearning Actors), German Trade Association for Digital Industry (BVDW) or Bitkom. On top of that, there are the German chambers of industry and commerce and initiatives launched by the Federal States (e.g. eLearning competence centre of the ‘Medienförderung nord-media’ in Lower Saxony).
Making use of specialist forums in the Internet and specialised Websites on eLearning can be an appropriate strategy for discussing questions with experienced eLearning users and to profit from their experiences. A case in point would be a community developed for instructors and trainers, teachers and lecturers under the name of ‘foraus.de’. This community was initiated by the German Federal Institute for Vocational Training and Education to focus on organisational conditions for eLearning and the requirements placed on trainers and instructors within the framework of topical forums.
German distribution platforms, such as webkolleg-nrw.de or iltec.de take criteria such as the ones mentioned in the checklist “Preliminary thoughts on selecting eLearning products on the market“ into account before adding eLearning offerings to their databases.