Jeffrey Bettger

I completely enjoyed Dr Bettger's class. I wish that he was teaching more of the Communicative Disorders classes. He was very energetic. It was obvious he was interested in the subject and would have liked to disscuss things more, but was limited by time. His homework assignments were appropriate to what we were studying and fun. The exams were fair. You definitely had to study, but if you took good notes, checked out his notes on the web, and were there on review day the exams weren't too difficult. He mixed things up in class with lectures, videos, and group work. Something he had that I thought was very helpful were notes and practice exams on his website. I found his class fun and informative and that he wanted us to learn and do well. He welcomed others opinions and was respectful of them. This is a GREAT teacher!

As a grad student from another dep't (English/Linguistcs) I had the extreme good fortune to audit Dr. Bettger's doctoral seminar in ASL linguistics/acquisition. It was a wonderful experience, no doubt greatly enhanced by the fact that the subject matter overlapped significantly with his major area of interest and expertise. He did an incredible job of facilitating class discussions and supporting the development of students as original researchers. Also, the course reader was phenomenal, as were the occasional visiting scholars he arranged to have visit the class. I have all too often taken seminars at SFSU which are little more than thinly-disguised small group lectures, so it was a real pleasure to study with someone who takes the seminar concept seriously. Working with undergrads in survey courses is probably not his forte (see prior reviews), but don't let that deter you if you have the opportunity to take him for grad level courses or courses on ASL/language acquisition and deafness. A truly great experience.

This was one of the worst classes I have ever taken at SFSU. The professor clearly did not want to be teaching the class as he has his Ph.D. and stated he does not want to be bothered with "undergraduates or whatever" as he usually only teaches "graduate students". He could never stay on the topic, his directions were unclear, his assignments were posted to the web to "save paper" and were changed on a daily basis according to his whims. Also the site was down frequently and we were not able to get important information about pressing projects that were due. His lecture style is very bizzare. No topic, forays into bizzare monologues that did not relate at all to the subject matter were the typical fare. I decided not to go into Communicative Disorders as I felt the program must be poor if a person of his caliber was teaching the introductory course.