I took this class online for Summer Session A, as a GE (STEM major). As other reviewers mentioned, who your TA is is ultimately most important. I personally had Becca D., who was extremely approachable, helpful, and all around a great TA. She regularly interacted with our discussion posts and took student concerns/feedback to heart.

In terms of class structure, readings were all provided as PDFs or links and, though lengthy, not difficult to get through as long as you planned accordingly. I highly recommend keeping up with all of them, as it makes discussion posts and writing assignments much easier to understand. I only watched lecture videos when I had to address a specific concept not mentioned in the readings or if I needed further clarification on something. Generally, skimming through and referring to lecture slides is sufficient.

Discussion posts were longer than i expected (around 300-400 words) but doable, though they were definitely the most tedious part of the course. They are pretty self-explanatory.

Writing assignments were easy: two problems sets that asked you to address one of the given prompts in two pages. The final was essentially the same thing, but longer and with more complex prompts. I highly recommend talking over ideas and outlines with your TA to get a clearer picture of what you want to write about.

In general, I enjoyed this class. It's extremely straightforward in structure, and the content is pretty clear. I'd definitely recommend it to those who want an online class and/or a relatively simple GE.

This class is:
5% survey (you get full credit for doing it)
15% First Midterm (Paper)
20% Second Midterm (Paper)
30% Final (Paper)
30% Discussion Board Posts

PAPERS: Make sure you read the feedback from you TA, they help a lot. I went 86 on my first, 96 on my second, and 98 on my final. However, I spent A LOT of time on my final, I had help from the undergraduate writing center and my friend who works there helped my a lot as well. Additionally, I asked my TA a lot of questions for clarification. MAKE SURE, AND I CAN'T STRESS THIS ENOUGH, MAKE SURE TO UNDERSTAND THE PROMPT COMPLETELY. The prompts were honestly the hardest part. You need to figure out exactly what they're asking. Sometimes it was hard for me to figure out if a word had a specific sociological meaning because I didn't do a lot of the readings and didn't watch any of the lectures, so my bad lol. The problems sets are easy and because there are so many prompts to choose from, you don't even need to do all of the readings. Definitely do some of them though, but they're really long and some of quite, very, extremely boring. For the final, like the problem sets, there are different prompts to choose from so just choose the prompts that you actually did the readings for.
DISCUSSION POSTS: You get asked (2) questions a week and need to respond to one classmate. The caliber and quality they expect from these things essentially make them mini essays. You get graded on these seriously (grammer, depth of response, use of outside sources/class materials), and for me they definitely took a while. They aren't long (400 words max) but again, you have to do three of them.

ALL IN ALL: I only watched two lectures and did about 1/3 of the readings (like actually understanding and reading them). I skimmed a few and about 1/3 I just didn't even open. All the papers have a bunch of prompts to choose from so you can just pick the prompt to whichever reading you did. Lectures are pretty useless, I did have to watch clips of some of them though to answer discussion posts. My TA was super nice (shoutout to you Caroline, hope you get to become a professor) and answered all of my questions and provided some nice clarifications on her blog posts. This class was a lot of work (even with my dumbass not doing readings or watching videos, but like the videos long, slow, and boring) and truly requires you to understand concepts, or at least the ones you plan on writing about. I probably wouldn't take this class during the school year because of how time consuming and fast it was, but it actually super interesting because its very tangible to ourlives. So like if you into learning and stuff and cool with a hard A, then this might be the class for you. But if you were like me, who just wanted an easy A but is on that med school grind so had to work his ass off for the A, then this class probably isn't for you.

I thought this class would be easy and require minimal work because it is an online class, but there were some time-consuming assignments. I found it frustrating because the TA never really helped the students enough and graded harshly (at least my TA). I did not obtain very good grades for the first 2 midterm papers, but I worked hard for the final paper and received an overall grade of an A. Because the grades are not uploaded regularly, it was difficult to gauge how well I was doing in the class. Otherwise, I found that this class was a good alternative to actually attending class with a non-virtual professor during the regular quarters because I could work on the assignments based on my schedule for that week or day. It was also helpful to work ahead, or catch up on the work if I was behind, due to this class being an online course. I would recommend this class if you are finding another alternative to the regular Sociology 1 courses, but it was definitely time-consuming.

Since it was my first online class I thought I would be confused as to where to find lectures and homework assignments. My TA and the Professor sent out a bunch of e-mails and it was easy to keep track of what was due when.
My problem set 1 and 2 I got 87/86 on but once I read the comments, which were very clear, I got a 93 on the final and ended up with an A- in the class. I also did every discussion post and they are interesting
10/10 would recommend taking this class as a GE or preparing for the MCAT.

I took this class online for Summer Session A 2016. Overall, it was very manageable. My TA required 1-3 discussion board posts a week, and was accommodating with my international travel schedule (I did 1.5 weeks of work in advance, totally doable). There are two midterms (short papers) and one final paper which is composed of 4 short papers. I got an 80 on the first midterm, a 93 on the second, and an A overall. Discussion board posts are easy and worth a lot of the grade, and 5% of the grade is just filling out a survey on class demographics at the beginning. I took this class because I'm thinking of a sociology major, but I'd recommend it as a GE too. Lectures were fairly interesting and most of the important material was covered in the slides. Roy has decades of experience in sociology and is a great professor to take an introductory class with. I never interacted with him personally because I was not in LA but I know he held in-person office hours for this class, which is pretty cool.

For the latest review, I previously stated that my final exam grade was unknown, but I reached out to my TA and got my grade from him, since the grade was not posted on myUCLA. It goes as follows:

Final Exam total 95%
Part I A
Part II B+/A-
Part III A
Part IV A

Summer 2015, Session A Grade Distribution:
Online survey completion 5%
Problem Set 1 15%
Problem Set 2 20%
Discussion Board participation 30%
Final Exam 30%

Professor Roy:
Professor Roy is very passionate about sociology and is very thoughtful about the subject matter. Taking this course online in the summer was fairly straightforward and easy. He posted lecture videos that were a bit documentary-style. There were three videos a week ranging from 45 minutes to over an hour. This class, being introductory, is incredibly broad, and focuses on the different institutions of society and the inequalities within them. I thought the course was very interesting, and the readings were also very insightful. He held virtual office hours and always answered student questions very detailed-like over email. Overall, Roy was a very eloquent instructor.

TA:
My TA was Brooks Ambrose, and he was generally very unresponsive. At first he seemed like an okay TA. But on the discussion board "Ask your TA," he didn't respond to any of the questions about the final paper. In looking over problem set drafts, he was adequate the first time. But for the second one he actually gave some pretty sound advice. However, I didn't feel like he was too helpful overall.

Online survey completion: 100/100 A
This survey was simple and straightforward, the easiest 5% you'll ever get. It was basically just a way to find out more about everyone in the class.

Problem set 1 grade: B+
The problem sets were two-page papers. You had a week to complete them and there were over ten prompts to choose from. These were fairly simple.

Problem set 2 grade: A
This problem set was identically formatted. The hardest parts about these problem sets was answering the prompts concisely.

Discussion board participation grade: 95/100 A
Discussion board posts were a bit annoying. Your TA would ask two questions a week, unless a problem set was due that week. One was an analytic question about the readings and concepts, and the other was an activity which usually required some light field work. In the last weeks of the course, we were put into discussion groups, and we needed to respond to each of the other members' posts. Etcetera etcetera. At first our TA told us that we were graded based on our responses, but later in the course he told us that we were actually just getting points for whether we submitted posts on time or not. I was late on one post and may have missed a response at the end of the session. But this is an easy grade to get.

Final exam grade: unknown
The final exam is significantly longer than the problem sets. It consisted of four questions. The first three were to be no more than 1000 words each and each had specific prompts to choose from, 30 points each. The last question was just a "what was the most important thing you learned" type. It was worth 10 points. You had about a week and a few days to complete this. The worst part of it was synthesizing readings and being concise, but otherwise it is fairly straightforward and easy to complete if you just sit and work continuously.

Overall grade: A
Overall, this course was very interesting and an easy GE. I highly recommend this course. Taking it over the summer is very manageable in 6 weeks, and the work load is not too bad at all.

Professor Roy is the best and definitely one of my favorite professors at UCLA. He is always willing to help and the lectures are not boring at all.

PROS:
"Problem Sets" (2-page papers) are super easy.
Material is simple to understand.
The multiple-choice final is pretty easy and is barely reading-based, but mostly common sense.
Professor Roy is a really nice guy.

CONS:
Lecture is PAINFULLY BORING.
Lecture is PAINFULLY GENERAL. (he talks about a gigantic societal institution for each lecture, such as "medical institutions.")
Reading is PAINFULLY EXCESSIVE. (pretty sure NO ONE read everything!)

I wouldn't really recommend this class. Pick a different professor for Soc 1. I heard Jepson is good.

I loved Professor Roy. He is such a caring and nice man. His lectures are pretty damn boring (slept almost every day) but recorded it on my phone to listen to later haha. The class material is very interesting and he definitely tries not to overwhelm students with a lot of readings. I had another professor who assigned 40-50 page readings twice a week and it was killer.

The final is multiple choice and super easy if you've done the readings. The grading goes like this:
Problem Sets 60%
Discussion Section 20%
Final Examination 20%
TOTAL: 100%

Problem Sets are papers due biweekly, 5 total at the end of the course. Discussion Section is such an easy A and TWENTY PERCENT of your grade. Just show up, sign in, say like one thing and you're golden. Also depends on your TA though since there are variations in discussion section grading. The thing that kills most people, since the average grade in Soc 1 is a B- according to Professor Roy, are the written Problem Sets. The TA's grade pretty damn hard so hopefully get a good one. I got an A- in the end. I didn't do all the readings so I kind of blanked on the last 15% of the final multiple choice but things turned out alright.