Took this class in Spring 2020 so it was fully online. This was easily one of the coolest classes I've taken at UCLA. Professor Brown makes learning about dinosaurs so enjoyable. The workload is minimal, the labs are honestly so fun, and the content is fascinating. I totally recommend this class if you're looking to take it as a GE like I did, or even just for fun!

Really easy science GE for anyone looking for one. Seriously, this is a really easy class. Personally, I had a knowledge and liking for dinosaurs since early childhood, but even if you have no idea what a dinosaur is, this is still an easy class. The lab TA I had (Erik) was also really easy, he virtually tells you the answer to every question on the lab during lab sessions. Overall, if you're looking for the easiest GE ever, this is just the class for that.

Super great class, even better if you're already interested in dinos.
There were two books for required reading, and some weeks she would upload pdfs/links to articles which would be the reading for that week too. Both books can be found online for free (l*bgen !!!) so don't waste your money buying it!!!! Both books have a lot of content, but she sets a weekly schedule for what chapters you need to read and from what book, so that made things easier. The content is easy to understand anyway, so skimming is totally enough to get through everything.
She goes through slides quite fast but due to being online the lectures were recorded and slides were uploaded onto CCLE so it made note-taking a whole lot easier.
Labs were super easy and cool. The TAs basically hold your hand and walk you through everything, and you go through the lab questions one-by-one and everyone answers the questions and discusses them together. Write up the lab DURING the lab so that once it's done you can just upload to gradescope.
There were weekly quizzes, based off either lecture or the readings, but with unlimited attempts, so that was nice. Midterm was really straightforward (multiple choice), pretty sure the average was in the 90s. The final was made optional in week 10 so that the highest score between the midterm and your final was taken to replace the other test's grade, so I personally didn't take the final to save myself time.
Overall, great flippin class, great way to impress family and friends with your weird knowledge of dinos, and also the prof has a lil cockatiel called Billie who is super sweet.

Took it during pandemic, didn't watch a single lecture, just reviewed the slides, got an A.

I took this class online during the pandemic. It was extremely easy. I don’t feel I learned that much about dinosaurs because it was hard to prioritize studying for such an easy class. The midterm was open book and multiple choice. The labs were interesting and I had a good TA, so they were also free points. No homework, aside from one lab we had to do on our own. The final could be replaced by your midterm score, so if you did well on the midterm you didn’t even have to attempt it. The quizzes were kind of fun, since you could keep attempting them until you got them right (it felt almost like an online trivia game). The lectures could be a little slow. The professor tried her best but some of the topics covered weren’t super interesting and paired with the professor’s connection issues I have a feeling a lot of people skipped. I thought it was a little deceiving that she posted her slides, but omitted a ton of slides that she used in the lecture. I understand wanting students to watch the lecture and not rely on the slides, but it would’ve been nice if she’d labeled them as condensed in some way. Overall, a very easy GE and a nice class to balance out more difficult classes. If the class were in person, however, I could see it being pretty difficult (not open book, not unlimited quiz responses). Online, definitely up there with the easiest (and most casually interesting) GEs I’ve taken.

I took this class with 3 friends, all of different majors. I don't think they had a good impression of the class, but mine is pretty neutral. It's not the easiest GE but it's not the hardest. If you're interested in the subject, you'll probably find it more interesting than if you just need an easy A. The lab sections were super easy, got above 90 on every one and finished early every time, and Andrew (TA) was chill and interesting. I did not find the books she assigns to be helpful. Take good notes on her slides, which are uploaded (so you don't have to go to lecture necessarily, but sometimes she says specific things that wouldn't be in the slide). For exams, STUDY THE STUDY GUIDE LIKE IT'S THE TEST. The online quizzes have unlimited tries, so it would be stupid to not get 100% on all of them. Honestly, compared to my engineering classes this is decently interesting to me, but my friend in psychology found it utterly mind-numbing.

TLDR: You'll probably have to study more than you first expect, and the books aren't useful, although slightly interesting. The professor is pretty entertaining in lecture but the subjects can get exhausting. Labs are easy. Study her guides for tests.

Cool class, cool professor, easy GE. If you attend the lectures (which are pretty fun and interesting) and pay attention, it should be pretty easy. The labs are super easy too, if you don't know something you can just ask the TA and they pretty much tell you the answer. The class averages were always above 90%. If you do the readings and use the study guide, you should do well on the midterm and final. I stopped doing the readings after the midterm and still managed to get a 97% on the final. I would say the most important part is to attend lecture, as the slides don't have any words on them so you can't understand them if you missed the lecture. If you do that, it should be an easy A.

Took this class a GE and it really was not that bad. Some of her lectures are pretty dense, but I think she is a really passionate lecturer so they aren't too bad to sit through.
The midterms and tests were honestly pretty tricky. I barely studied, just reviewed my notes from lectures (which I attended most) and made sure I knew the dinosaur names which she provided in a study guide. I also did not do a single reading, and was able to get an A on the midterm and B+ on the final.
Labs are pretty easy and you can often finish early and leave. There is one group project but that is also pretty easy, and annoying to do if anything.
The class is actually pretty fun- if you are at all interested in dinosaurs, you will probably leave knowing a little too much about them. Not the easiest GE cause the midterm and final might be stressful, but definitely on the easy spectrum.

I took this class as a GE and was hoping to do well in it. Professor Brown is a sweet woman, but I found the lectures kind of dull and hard to sit through. She moves through the slides quite quickly; they are posted on CCLE, but most of the slides don't have any words, just pictures. I didn't end up going to many of the lectures, because I was unable to pay good attention in them & it was a little inconvenient for me to walk all the way over to CS at that time of my day.

The labs were alright. I got high As on all of them, but that was probably because I worked in a group of people and we asked our TA for help quite often. Each lab is a packet of questions that require looking at fossils or photos. There was one group project that was a lab grade, and it was basically to make a diorama of life in the Jurassic; it was quite a pain to complete, because it required time spent outside of lab, physically building a project. However, my group of 3 finished it in a day, and received a 100% on it. There are also weekly quizzes on CCLE. They're pretty easy because there are unlimited retakes. One quiz grade was dropped at the end of the quarter.

The midterm and final were kind of tricky. Granted, I didn't go to all of the lectures, but I spent a while studying for each. Professor Brown posted study guides for both, and a lot of the class collaborated on the guides. The midterm contained short answers, while the final did not. These tests were not as easy as I expected them to be for a GE.

I was kind of annoyed at having to buy the textbooks; they were not cheap, and I couldn't find anyone who was selling them as used. Personally, I think they are totally not necessary. Overall, if you are genuinely interested in the topic, this class will probably be easy to do well in. However, if you are just looking to get the physical science GE over with (and aren't really too interested in the topic), be prepared to put in a little more effort than you would likely expect.

While it's true that this GE isn't quite as easy as it once was (no longer a guaranteed A now), it still shouldn't be that hard to get an A as long as you are reasonably keeping on top of things, or aren't falling too far behind. Professor Brown's lectures I ended up not going to after the midterm, because she posts all the slides online and everything is straight from the slides. One caveat, however, is guest lectures, as they don't post the guest lecture slides online so it's still a good idea to go to those. She talks pretty fast but pretty clearly during lecture, and answers questions quite effectively.
In labs, there were 7 for us this quarter. Labs were pretty fun, as you could work with a group (if you chose to do so), and you complete a packet while you look at fossils. Some TAs are more strict about lab grades than others; my TA, Erik Weidner, was pretty awesome in that he basically said "I'm here if you want all the right answers". If you were stuck on a problem, don't be afraid to ask your TA, especially since they don't expect you to become a world class paleontologist on the first day. As the labs go by, you start getting faster and more familiar with the packet, and start leaving the labs earlier and earlier. There is one group lab, where you work together to recreate a Jurassic environment (Solnhofen Limestone), and it seems every group in my lab section got an A for that one (just be creative, there were things from dioramas to baseball cards to posters).
We had two exams, one midterm and one final. The midterm consisted of 39 multiple choice and 11 points worth of short answer, and honestly it wasn't that bad (provided you do the readings and were somewhat staying on top of things). The final consisted of just 70 multiple choice questions, and that wasn't half bad (although the average was around 52/70, but the class has a slight curve, so you're alright). I will say however that the grades took so long for our TA to upload. We didn't get the midterm short answer grade until AFTER taking the final exam, while the final exam grades came in literally around the last hours of the deadline.
In terms of grading, your grade consisted of 10% weekly online quizzes (CCLE based), 25% labs, 30% midterm, and 35% final. The weekly online quizzes should be guaranteed points, as they're based on the reading and you have UNLIMITED attempts (taking the highest score). Take them seriously though, as some of those problems do show up on the final exam/midterm. Also, there were two extra credit opportunities for us this quarter, with one being to test out a paleontology themed board game, and the second was completing a trip by going to the NHM (natural history museum of LA county), with both providing the opportunity to replace your lowest lab grade with 100/100. I'd say that overall, this class can be interesting (I found the section on T-Rex particularly so), and with a small amount of work, you should be able to get an A too.