Organization: ASHI (American Society of Home Inspectors)
Deliverables: eCourse
Tools: Articulate Rise, Photoshop, Synthesia, Premiere Pro
Audience: Real estate agents and home inspectors
Seat Time: [TIME – TBD]
The Problem
Real estate agents and home inspectors depend on each other for referrals, but agents weren’t always familiar with how inspections work. That gap made agents nervous that detailed inspection reports would unsettle buyers or slow down a closing. Agents needed to understand what inspectors are required to examine, how findings get documented, and where the scope ends so they could prepare clients and move through inspection conversations with actual confidence.
What I Did
Every lesson was written from the agent’s point of view. I started with real client questions agents actually hear: anxiety about long reports, expectations that inspectors will price repairs or predict failures, confusion about why inspectors don’t recommend specific contractors.
Instead of listing “correct” phrases, I modeled actual client conversations paired with the reasoning behind them—showing how the response aligns with the Standard of Practice. That gives agents language they can use immediately and builds the underlying understanding they need to adapt that language when the course doesn’t explicitly cover something. [Client Conversation Models sample]
The Pizza Analogy does the heavy lifting. The Standard uses two terms throughout—inspect and describe—and they’re not interchangeable. Before inspectors work through ten home systems, they need a clean mental model of the difference. I built it through a familiar object with zero stakes: pizza. Learners work through a mock inspection checklist structured exactly like the Standard, observing what’s visible, noting deficiencies, describing components by type without evaluating them. By the time they move into actual home systems, inspect/describe is already in place.
Then there’s a post-inspection scenario where learners step into the pressure that exists in real conversations: a client who’s anxious, asking fast questions, and looking to the agent for certainty. Each choice leads to a different outcome, making the consequences of imprecise language visible rather than abstract. [Post-Inspection Scenario screenshot]
What Happened
Learner survey results were strong across every dimension:
- 95% rated the course Excellent or Good overall
- 96% reported the information was of genuine value to their work
- 96% rated subject matter knowledge as Excellent or Good
The success led directly to a commissioned follow-on series extending the instructional approach to additional topics within the ASHI professional development curriculum.
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