I took this class asynchronously with an in-person discussion. Honestly, it was pretty easy. The class is based on a textbook and the professor's lectures basically repeated everything from the readings. I found the tests to be fairly easy by taking detailed notes on the readings and reviewing them the night before, as well as going through the TA's practice questions. There were 2 midterms and no final, and the midterms were not cumulative! The midterms themselves were pretty simple, just multiple choice asking about concepts from the readings on a somewhat basic level. The readings though were a bit long and could take me a long time to get through, but given that it was just 1 chapter a week and a few lecture videos, the workload was really low and I could knock everything out in a day. My TA was Roxanne and she was super nice! Really lenient with the discussion assignments and very approachable.

I took this class as a GE credit and unfortunately this class was not the easiest for me. During lectures and TA discussions, I felt confident with the material at hand, but unfortunately, my exam scores did not reflect my knowledge on the subject. While both the midterm and final were very short, the questions were very oddly worded, and left me and many of my peers receiving low outcomes for our final grade in the class. I would not say this is a challenging GE overall, as the course work was light, however if you do not have a "sociology brain" and have a hard time thinking in this way, I would not recommend this class as the exam questions will likely trip you up. However, the material provided during class time was very straight forward, and did not find attending lectures a requirement for this course as Prof. Villarreal puts most if not all required information directly on the slides which are shared on Canvas.

The seminar requires you to read a research paper or other source material each week and then write a reflection memo for it. The memo is due the morning of the Sunday before your seminar class. This has sometimes led to late last minute reading and writing for this 1 unit seminar. Be better than me. That said, if you're not familiar with reading academic papers, it might take you a while to get through the papers and understanding them. Some of these academic papers took me 3+ hours getting through them. But that could just be me.
Don't expect to get 100s easily from the memos. Professor Villarreal is very particular with the 100s he gives. So normally, the highest grade you'll get is 90. Don't worry if you don't get a 90 for each memo. I couldn't consistently get 90s but I still got an A. But sometimes, it got really stressful thinking about it, especially since the syllabus didn't include a numerical grade to alphabetical grading scale.
As for the seminar part of the class, it didn't really feel like a seminar. Most of the time, it was Professor Villarreal sharing an overview of the reading of the week then him talking with the occasional student who voluntarily shares. Professor Villarreal does try to encourage people to share their memos and thoughts, but most of the time people talk because Villarreal mentions their memo. I think if seminar participation was part of the grade, then more people would be motivated to speak during the seminars. I think this seminar could meet its full seminar-potential if people spoke more and if there were sources that would help understand the readings if you weren't familiar with comprehending research papers.