Job Discussion Forums

[veiledsentiments]

I didn't find the post suspicious just because it seemed to be written by a non-native speaker (so what...) or was post number one, but because of this line:

[omanoman]

could be the "students have been respectful and polite" clause which possibly strains credibility.

Actually, I think it's true for the most part. Now if he/she had said that students are engaging and motivated.......

[Tazz]

Absolutely nothing against non-native speakers being hired here....I work with many of them-but a shill is a shill-regardless of their nationality...I notice there has been no response from 'new recruit'!

[MuscatGary]

[omanoman]

To be honest, I felt the same way my first go round at uni after highschool. Choosing classes based on some profs reputation, friends joining, proximity to the pub or the easy schedule.

[balqis]

Yes, but the aviation crowd is the elite, and probably well connected too. Their motivation is propelled by money from the back and money afoot in the air at the front. And money goes, well flies indeed, a long way and assumes many smart faces.
Whereas to many provincial colleges in Oman are ushered many a time bedouins, camel herders and simple village girls, many of whom do not even have tables and chairs per sei at home, spend their home life on the floor and have the Quran as the only home book. Why would they be motivated? What for? Why would they care for the fancies of IELTS or cushy dry inventions of the UCLES world?

Yet these bedouins have their charms and talents too, though their intelligence goes askance the proper one, and is tangential to the yeard-stick of education, but still visible in the way they drive machines as if they were - the machines I mean - sensitive animals, in the swashbuckle grace of their walk or the thoroughbred way they hold a rifle in the rifle shops in the old Nizwa souq.

balqis

[veiledsentiments]

[NewRecruit]

Not sure how you judge non-native English speakers, as I'm not one of them. Good try, though.

My posting was meant to:

a.) encourage new staff members, especially native English speakers, to consider applying to NCT and

b.) to counter some of the highly negative postings I read online about NCT that lacked any concrete details about why it was so horrible.

It's important to distinguish between the Nizwa College of Technology and the University of Nizwa, which has had some issues in their English Department over the past couple of years.

NCT is pretty tolerable as a work environment. We don't live in a perfect world, so don't expect perfection here. Our class sizes and teaching hours have increased; not everyone takes their job and job responsibilities seriously; and it's highly challenging to get a transfer request signed by this centre. However, if you're realistic in your expectations and open to engaging with other instructors from different countries who have different teaching methods and philosophies, that's a good start.

I stand by what I wrote about students being polite and respectful. For the most part, this is what I've experienced day after day. I've also observed that they don't seem to hold grudges. They seem to get over things quickly, and not return to past issues.

If you have any questions or suspicions, you're free to send a message to me. Just note that I don't check my Dave's account very often.

[veiledsentiments]

Welcome back newrecruit... though you are not so new anymore. LOL

Not sure if it is still in effect, but normally one needs to have 5 posts to get PMs. This is to stop spammers who join merely to send us all junk mail here along with our personal emails.

VS

[Tazz]

Here we go folks- it's recruitment for academic year 2015-2016 time!

[veiledsentiments]

If he were the only person who has reported here that the Nizwa branch is an OK job, there might be more reason for suspicion. But we have quite a few teachers post positively, in fact, more positive than negative as I recall. Many of the negative posts on UoN have drawn the suggestion that this college is better.

VS

[balancedsentiments]

I haven't been back to update this for a long time, because it seemed there was no point. MoM took over recruitment for quite a while (without letting the colleges know about that for some time) and proceeded to hire some lecturers in India themselves and use an agency in the Philippines to hire a lot more. I should have posted a month or so ago when a new recruitment drive started, but was busy with other things. I know at least one applicant has contacted a colleague of mine by looking up her work email address - points for initiative!

TATI advertising often?
I've sen a few posts questioning why TATI (and other agencies) advertise so often. Sometimes they have been told to hire but the positions haven't ended up being there for assorted reasons. Not their fault. See above and below.

NCT
The ELC built up to about 120 lecturers at one stage, when there were almost 2000 students in the centre (Foundation and Post-Foundation). It was a bit of a zoo for a while - things were pretty cramped. The rest of the college was near capacity and couldn't handle the future flow of students from foundation. There were plans to deal with that, but they hit glitches, so our intakes were reduced to allow time for the other departments to expand. It took longer than expected. That happens. In the meantime, the pressure was taken off us and there was little need for new lecturers, although it seemed a couple of times that there would be. (Hence some of TATI's ads.)

Current situation
There has been a lot of progress on the campus. The gutting and refurbishment of buildings for Engineering, Business and IT should be finished by September, so we'll get some classrooms back. A couple of new buildings are under construction, which will further ease things for other departments. All of that that means our intakes will go up again.

Of course, while all of this has been happening, lecturers have retired or left. Natural attrition for the most past. The result tis that we need quite a few people for September. There will probably be more positions from January, when we hit our peak student numbers. I understand that most of the September vacancies have been filled, but there may still be a couple left and you often see someone pull out.

Nizwa update
It's still a sleepy country town/city and I hope it will mostly stay that way for a long time to come. I think you get to appreciate being in Oman in ways that you never will in Muscat, especially if you live in one of the older parts of town here. On the other hand, there's no nightlife to speak of and there are only a couple of restaurants. The Golden Tulip Hotel is good for food and has great b--r on tap around the pool, but is a long way out of town. The hotels closer in are very mediocre.

LuLu Hypermarket (the biggest one in the country!!!!) has a sometimes surprising range of foodstuffs. You won't find everything you would in a large Western city supermarket, but some will be happy to pick up things like Jamie Oliver spice mixes and Old El Paso products that you definitely won't see in most of the country. Shopping there is much more pleasant that in the LuLu's in Muscat. And it doesn't . . . smell.

Carrefour (UAE franchise of the French chain) is due to open their competing store and mall right next door next year, which will be nice in terms of added product choice and hopefully drive prices down a bit. Cinema? Cinema? Cinema? There are rumours, but who knows. We can only hope.

The govt announced last year that it wanted to make Nizwa a permanent centre of Omani culture and a large cultural centre is under construction, unfortunately some distance outside town. Once completed, it will hopefully be a venue for some interesting events.

Student update
Here I have to sadly say that things haven't been so great recently. I think the level has dropped a bit over the last few years. Friends in Muscat (including at SQU) have said the same. For a long time, schools 'promoted' students irrespective of their grades and I think we have had to deal with the results of that. Not that i's confined to Oman. As far as I can tell, 'soft marking' has been raised as a problem in a lot of countries, including Western ones. The policy was stopped a couple of years ago and school students failed outright for the first time in probably a decade. Hopefully that means school students have buckled down more and we'll start to see improvements from September.

Having whinged, I have to say that there are still good ones and the students are still mostly very nice. They can be interesting and a lot of fun. Everyone in the ELC has had difficult or unpleasant experiences at one time or another, but that's par for the course everywhere in the world and you work out your own ways of dealing with it. You can always find some who respond to that little bit of attention and feedback or that little bit of encouragement and start to flower. Isn't that what it's all about?

NewRecruit (see earlier posts)
Yes, NR is a native speaker. We were chatting a couple of months ago and revealed our Dave's posts to each other. NR is relatively new to EFL (mostly having taught literature in the past) and had some problems early on, as usual, but came through them very well. I agree with the comments in general.


If anyone is sitting out there, wondering whether to accept an offer or wanting some more info, feel free to PM me. I'll be without Net access for about a week from 11/7, when I go home. If you haven't heard back about your visa, relax. It's Ramadan and things slow down. Then there's up to a week of Eid holiday, so the paperwork might not come through until August. Go with the flow.

[veiledsentiments]

Thanks cousin Balanced... helpful information...

VS

[balancedsentiments]

Thanks, VS. Actually, I suspect most people won't care about the NCT background and this is late, but hopefully it'll be of some use to someone at some stage.

[parched]

Thank you for this update on the college and town. As a prospective newcomer, I found it informative and reassuring.