My name is Tom Corcoran. I am an experienced multimedia designer located in Normal, Illinois.
Services I can offer you through skills developed throughout my 16+ years of digital media design experience are included on the Services web page. Feel free to contact me at the contact information on this page to discuss your needs and how I can serve you.
My design experience includes an Associate in Applied Science Degree (A.A.S.) in Digital Media Communication from Heartland Community College earned in 2005. In this degree I graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA including performing the following 3 graphic artist internships:
McLean County branch of the Arthritis Foundation (graphic and website work for the annual Jingle Bell Run) in 2003,
B & B Awards and Recognition (laser engraving and sublimation printing for a locally owned awards & trophy retail store) in 2004, and
The McLean County Farm Bureau (graphics/signage and web site work for the local McLean County Fair) in 2006.
After performing the internship for the Arthritis Foundation in 2003, I continued to volunteer as a graphic artist in 2004-2007 performing the same graphic design work on the Jingle Bell Run Race Day Journal. Upon graduation from Heartland Community College, I worked for the college as a part-time lab assistant for 2 years (2005-2007) performing a variety of multimedia and instruction technology assistance for faculty and staff of the college. In 2007, I was hired on as the Media Technologist full-time, where I performed a variety of web design, graphic design and audio/video production work for the Instructional Development Center and IT Department at the college. I served in that role for 9 years until Fall 2016.
Recently I finished refreshing and updating graphic and web site skills by being enrolled in the Web Design Undergraduate Certificate through DeVry University. I earned that certificate in early Fall 2018 graduating with a perfect 4.0 GPA.
And going back... I am also a graduate of Illinois State University in 1997 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Psychology. This degree assists my understanding of theoretical concepts such as color theory, human perception, cognitive science, Gestalt theory, and an understanding of human motivation.
Skills
With over a decade of multimedia design work experience, I am qualified to perform the following skillsets:
Graphic Design Skills
Branding
Image Compositing
Image Editing/Manipulation
Infographic Design
Logo Design
Page Layout
Product Photography
Instructional Technology
TechSmith Camtasia screen recording software
Blackboard Learning Management System Administration and Content Creation
Podcast creation, audio editing and uploading
Web Design Skills
Cascade Server Content Management System (CMS) Administration
Cascading Style Sheets/CSS3
HTML/HTML5
JavaScript/jQuery
Joomla Content Management System (CMS) Administration
SASS
Responsive Web Design
Video Production Skills
Audio Recording/Editing
Motion Graphics Creation
Video Recording/Editing
Awards and Recognition
The following information details 5 major award nominations I received while working at Heartland Community College. Additionally, I received 24 "HCC" Awards from colleagues for excellent work while working at Heartland Community College.
In need of advertising for the Negro League Panel, a program sponsored by the Diversity Team in the Spring 2009, Tom Corcoran unselfishly gave his time and expertise and designed the advertising poster and postcards that were not only displayed around campus but around the community as well. Tom was under no obligation to complete the posters and postcards but did so to help the programs. He accepted this significant request with very little time to complete it and in addition to his already busy schedule.
The posters and postcards were wonderfully designed, displayed images of the Negro Leagues (baseball). Many of the students and community members who attended used the postcards to collect autographs (of former Negro League professional baseball players). The posters certainly had the desired effect as the Negro League panel and presentation was very well attended.
Tom's extra effort, professionalism and talent should not go unnoticed.
- Doug Dowell, Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Social Work (February 2010)
Tom Corcoran is truly one of the hidden gems at Heartland Community College. Consistently, Tom's standards for performance are very high. He strives to provide excellent service to students, faculty and other employees of the college.
In 2011 Tom's position was transferred from the Instructional Development Center (IDC) to the Information Technology (IT) Department. While his physical location moved, the focus of his position remains in support of instructional technology and media development.
Tom has been instrumental in streamlining support for Blackboard, the College learning management system. Realizing that support for Blackboard was reaching critical mass, in 2011 Tom took ownership to build out an elaborate orientation and support class for students and employees using Blackboard. Tom structured the course in such a way that allowed students to "practice" the features and "test" the functionality of Blackboard's tools before their classwork began. Tom included short videos, answers to frequently asked questions and technical support documentation to empower Blackboard users. The results of his attention to detail have paid off nicely in a dramatic reduction of Blackboard support issues.
Tom helped to further develop a rotational support model by training other members of the IT Web team and the Dean of Online Learning and Instructional Technology in troubleshooting Blackboard issues, allowing for more methodical and timely responses to technical support issues. In addition, while I was away on extended medical leave Tom took the initiative to oversee the continuity of support for Blackboard. When there were holes in the on-call schedule, Tom volunteered to take additional on-call shifts.
Tom led the charge to develop policy to encourage the use of multimedia. Understanding technical considerations, Tom worked with the committee to create a policy that focuses on empowering employees to find creative ways to use multimedia to support the mission of the College.
Tom is truly a treasure and deserves to be commended for his consistent standard of excellence. Please consider him for this award.
- Jackie Langhoff, Web Site Manager, IT Department (March 2012)
Tom has many attributes that contribute to the consistent quality of service he provides to faculty all across the campus and to his fellow Academic Support Center and Instructional Development Center colleagues. Among them are: organization, thoroughness, accuracy, professionalism, creativity, promptness, and dedication. I have never learned of anyone's discontent with his service and work.
- Deborah Gentry, Director of the Instructional Development Center (March 2010)
Whether of not Tom Corcoran is providing service in the context of his position at HCC as Media Technologist for the IDC or providing service in a supplemental way to HCC faculty and staff, he does so with high quality. Quality service, with regard to Tom, encompasses the following: efficient, accurate, careful, creative, timely, organized, and thorough. To top it all off, he serves with a kind and friendly demeanor.
- Deborah Gentry, Director of the Instructional Development Center (February 2009)
Tom was asked to design, draft and complete the Student Orientation Advisement and Registration (SOAR) website. He easily put in over 40 hours on the project and was always helpful and constructive in his comments and work. Tom had the additional misfortune to be working on an emergency project that did not allow for the separation of development into: content generation, design, and test environment phases. Thus, often one change in content caused a subsequent change in design and the test environment website.
Tom worked successfully with a faculty member, two Associate Deans, and our Website Manager while bridging the work between Student Services and Information Technology. Additionally, Tom did not neglect any of his other Instructional Development Center duties while he worked on SOAR.
The initial phase of the SOAR website is up and running, and his experience has produced a Website Redesign Process that will be used for future website projects here at Heartland.
- Padriac Shinville, Associate Dean of Academic Support (March 2007)
As a Program Coordinator in Continuing Education at Heartland Community College, I was tasked with managing the computer skills and technology related open enrollment courses and customized trainings provided to local businesses as well as all of the instructor's schedules. Additionally, I designed flyers, graphics and PowerPoint slides for special events held by the Continuing Education Department.
As Media Technologist at Heartland Community College I served administration, faculty and staff of the college performing video production in conjunction with the Creative Services department. I also performed a variety of web content updating, designed posters and other print materials for instructors and staff, offered both person one-on-one and classroom training on a variety of instructional technology topics, and even recorded a weekly podcast for the college. My time in this position was split between the Instructional Development Center (2007-2011) and the Information Technology (IT) Department (2011-2016). In total I have 5.25 years of work history in the Instructional Development Center and more than 5.5 years in the IT Department at Heartland Community College.
As an Adobe Flash software instructor for the Community Education department at Heartland Community College I developed and taught introductory and intermediate Adobe Flash Professional CS5 courses.
While working as a Lab Assistant at Heartland Community College in the Instructional Development Center I had the opportunity to develop a variety of print and web based designs for faculty and staff of the college. Additionally, in Spring 2006 I developed the college's original AQIP accreditation web site containing information useful for tracking the continuous improvement efforts of the college.
As I was taking courses through Heartland Community College in Digital Media design between 2002-2005 I was employed in 2003-2004 as a Copy Shop Assistant in the copy shop within the OfficeMax retail office supply store. In this role I performed original graphic design work as well as printing, binding and finishing, and customer service assistance.
At the McLean County Farm Bureau, I served as a Graphic Artist Intern over the Summer of 2006. At this internship, I updated the McLean County Fair website and created print signage directing patrons of the county fair. Additionally, I created the t-shirt design seen below for participants in the "Katrina Project" in which dog houses were created for displaced residents of Hurricane Katrina.
While performing a Graphic Artist internship at B & B Awards and Recognition, I learned about performing layout and laser engraving of trophies and a variety of other awards. Additionally, I performed sublimation printing of aluminum plates for use as name badges for several local businesses.
As a Graphic Artist Intern, I served the Arthritis Foundation by updating the local branch of the Arthritis Foundation website and designing the Jingle Bell Run and Walk Race Day Journal. This multipage publication is distributed to all Jingle Bell Run and Walk participants and contains information about Arthritis Foundation programs offered to the community as well as Race Day event information and local sponsor's advertisements.
While serving as a Graphic Artist Intern through the McLean County Farm Bureau in the Summer of 2006, I was connected with the Midwest Food Bank. Here I volunteered to design a trifold brochure PDF used to advertise the food bank's services offered to our community.
After serving as a Graphic Artist Intern for the Arthritis Foundation in 2003, I returned as a volunteer Graphic Designer for the annual Jingle Bell Run and Walk event for 4 straight years. While volunteering I designed the Race Day Journal PDF filled with details about programs offered by the Arthritis Foundation and information for Jingle Bell Race participants.
In total, I have attained 247 undergraduate college credit hours (80 courses and 3 graphic artist internships... the equivalent of more than 8 years). My final 42 courses (130 credit hours) are all straight As. These include my final 6 courses at Illinois State University, 2 courses taken through Illinois Central College (in 1999), all 24 courses taken at Heartland Community College and all 10 courses taken through DeVry University.
As a big believer in being a lifelong learner, I have also taken several professional development (non-credit) courses as ongoing learning .
I enrolled in the Web Design Certificate through DeVry University to refresh and update skills in the ever changing field of media design. The emphasis of these courses was a deeper understanding of graphic design techniques and web design skills including responsive design. I graduated from this certificate with Honors earning 99.63% out of 10,000 total points.
Degree
Associate in Applied Science Degree (A.A.S.) in Digital Media Communication (4.0 GPA)
While enrolled in the Digital Media Communication degree at Heartland Community College I learned all aspects of multimedia design including video production techniques, as well as graphic and web design skills. I graduated with a perfect 4.0 GPA from this degree program
My emphasis while earning my Bachelors degree in Psychology was personality theories and social psychology. This degree assists me have a greater understanding of human motivation, cognitive psychology, and perception as well as research methods. This degree helps me relate to users, understand audience motivation and develop user experience design.
I have many years of software experience with several design software packages including Adobe Photoshop (since 2001), Adobe Illustrator (since 2004), Adobe InDesign (since 2005), and Adobe Flash (since 2003). I've been doing video production with and Final Cut Pro since 2004 and Apple Motion since 2011. Additionally, I have been using home computers since 1983.
This conference covered all things iPhone photography. Topics included getting that perfect iPhone photo for social media, iPhone photo accessories, panoramas, long-exposure and time lapse photography, and macro photography just to name a few.
Scott Kelby, photographer, trainer and award winning Photoshop author, was joined by a panel of 17 renowned photographers during this 2-day online live conference presentation. Topics discussed included action adventure photography, capturing wildlife photos, framing and composing landscapes, and much more.
Keynote speaker Paul Trani, Adobe Evangelist, delivered information about the latest advancements in many of the Adobe Creative Cloud applications including the ability to print 3-dimensional objects directly from Adobe Photoshop. This all day event included trainings on a wide variety of Adobe Creative Cloud applications presented by Ascend Training staff.
Single day gathering to discuss a wide array of new Web 2.0 concepts and cutting edge instructional technologies such as augmented reality in nursing courses and Chromecast technology to share student information from tablet devices.
Multi-day national instructional technology gathering for secondary schools and higher education institutions incorporating topics from science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Additional topics included learning management system architecture and information technology to better serve the student population of these institutions.
Covering 2-days of information regarding using Microsoft SharePoint as a collaboration and enterprise-level business administration software application. Topics included document repository and management, team site collaboration and SharePoint site customization.
Donald E. Stephens Convention Center Rosemont, Illinois
Date
January 21, 2009
Details
Adobe Evangelist Terry White spoke about the latest techniques using Adobe InDesign CS4 for professional page layout. Additionally, web designer and trainer Chris Converse presented on Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 and the latest web design techniques.
2-day workshop detailing information for colleges seeking accreditation through the Higher Learning Commission Academic Quality Improvement Program (AQIP). Knowledge gained included how the systems portfolio was to be researched, written, assembled, and produced for submission to the Higher Learning Commission.
Donald E. Stephens Convention Center Rosemont, Illinois
Date
November 5, 2007
Details
Bert Monroy, professional digital art illustrator, presented on the newest techniques for using Adobe Illustrator CS3 to create photo-realistic illustrations and graphics.
Information presented on adding podcasting as an instructional technology. Included was information on using various podcasting tools such as Apple GarageBand and Audacity freeware podcasting software for recording and producing quality podcasts specifically for use in a higher education setting.
Workshops Presented
The following are a list of individual workshop offerings I created, managed and presented between 2008 and 2010 while working as the Media Technologist in the Instructional Development Center at Heartland Community College. Each workshop was one hour in length, served as a stand alone workshop on a single date, came with an instructional handout for attendees to take with them, and was open to all faculty and staff of the college. In total, I offered 20 different topics over 48 presentation opportunities to more than 180 attendees.
I created the handouts linked below for the corresponding workshop listed. These handouts contain older information since they were designed between 2008-2010.
Workshop
VoiceThread Sharing Comment and Jing Screen Recording
In the first half hour come learn to upload Microsoft PowerPoint slides or images into the free VoiceThread online application, add audio comments and share your slides allowing others to comment as well. See how you could use this collaboration tool in your courses. Bring slides or images to create a VoiceThread. Jing, a free screen recording application, allows you to create simple, quick screen recordings/videos for demonstrations and tutorials. Uses of Jing, ADA compliance issues regarding adding multimedia to a college course, and compatibility with Camtasia Studio will be covered in the second half hour.
Want to add audio files to your online course experience? Learn to convert audio to MP3 format, edit using Audacity, and embed the audio into your online course. ADA compliance issues regarding adding multimedia files to a college course will be discussed. Bring your audio files. In the second half hour you'll learn about options you have for adding video to a Blackboard course. We'll discuss streaming video, linking and embedding to YouTube video and how you can best use video technology in a Blackboard online course. Again ADA compliance issues will be discussed.
Adding appropriate images to an online course can add interest for students. However, images that are too large or too high resolution can slow down the loading of your online course leading to frustration. Come learn to resize those large images. Also this hour we will cover how using either an image editing program such as Adobe Photoshop or Microsoft PowerPoint will allow you to create visually interesting banner graphics to add to your blackboard online course. Bring an image(s) to resize and/or to use to create a banner graphic for your courses landing page.
Would you like to know more about the basics of how web pages are created and designed? In part one we will cover fundamentals of HTML to create your own basic web pages.
Part two of the HTML workshop will delve into the world of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) where you can format graphics and text to organize your web page designs.
Use these 4 basic principles of graphic design, color theory, and an understanding of typography and see an improvement in the quality of your own flyers, posters and other designs.
Interested in the growing phenomenon of podcasting? Learn how you (or your students) can add podcasting to your course delivery/materials using Audacity and a headset/microphone.
In this follow up to the Podcast workshop, you’ll learn how to create RSS feeds for your podcast content using an XML file to link your content to the iTunes Podcast Directory.
Would you like to know more about the basics of how web pages are created and designed? This workshop will cover Basic Web site HTML and Cascading Style Sheet design for use in online instruction.
Want to create simple video or audio but don't know where to start? Using these two easy to use devices you can record, edit and share video and audio. Both piece of equipment are available for check out.
In this workshop we'll emphasize sharing... something that would make mom proud. Come learn how to upload all those vacation photos to online sites such as Flickr or Picasa allowing you to share photos over the web. Also covered will be document sharing. Using tools such as Google Docs you can collaborate with multiple users on Word Documents, Excel Spreadsheets or PowerPoint Slides/ Presentation all online.
Find out how you can use blogs and wikis as a communication tool. Blogs allow you to create your own web site, post your thoughts on topics, and receive feedback in the form of comments from your audience. Wikis provide for a unique, easy way to collaborate over the Internet with a specific group of people on a wide range of topics.
Learn out how to record anything you do on a computer screen and share it with others. With Camtasia you can add audio narration to PowerPoint presentations, record yourself navigating to particular places on the Internet, show an audience how to use a piece of software, create training videos and more.
The documents contained within this section are Blackboard Learning Management System tech support handouts created while I was the Media Technologist in the Instructional Development Center at Heartland Community College. These handouts were created in 2010-2011.
Topic
Embedding Audio into a Blackboard Course
Details
Instructions for adding audio into a Blackboard course.
In addition to my formal, credit college education I have also taken several continuing education (non-credit) courses through colleges. The following list details those professional development courses taken.
Course covers aspects of designing web applications using HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript as well as responsive design, optimizing for mobile devices and more.
Variety of aspect pertaining to social media including types of platforms, social media organization, evaluating the effectiveness of social media posts, and best practices in using platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and more.
Online tools and resources were covered in this course. A variety of learning management systems, collaboration tools, and podcasting were among the topics discussed.
The project management of the creation of an e-learning course all the way through the management of content, setup of delivery format through the evaluation of learners was covered in this course.
Image Air Fixed Base Operator Bloomington, Illinois
Date
Spring 2009
Details
This course covered a wide range of topics involving becoming a private pilot. Information included basic fundamentals of flight, operation of a general aviation aircraft, safety procedures, and more.
