The growing adjunct faculty presence in higher education highlights a need for research-based onboarding. To explore social media as a low-cost solution for the socialization of adjunct faculty, specifically in the form of a new plug-in for Moodle, 77 community college adjunct faculty members took part in a randomized, pre-test post-test control group design intervention with the new Moodle Socialwall format plug-in. This research was framed by a model of socialization proposed by Schrodt, Cawyer, & Sanders (2003) in which effective organizational socialization is comprised of three essential dimensions (ownership, adequate information, connectedness). Though social media has been illustrated to support connection, information needs, and ownership in other contexts, analyses of quantitative data did not find statistically significant effects in this study. A small subset of intervention participants did report that the Socialwall aided their socialization by providing access to relevant information and connection with colleagues. This verbal subset of users also expressed factors related to the socialization of adjunct faculty they felt needed further exploration: adjuncts’ personal initiative, institutional acknowledgement of adjuncts’ diverse commitments, access to information and feedback related to adjuncts’ instructional efficacy, formal interactions for adjuncts with academic departments, and opportunities for college inclusion that were accessible in the context of adjuncts’ schedules and commitments. This research provides a cautionary note about the potential of social media tools for institutional use with adjunct faculty along with notes on the time and attention that must be given to implementation and intervention design to effectively estimate its impacts.
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