Overall, Ayala is a super great professor and is incredibly smart about the topics he covers. The work definitely isn't easy, and you have to put in the effort to watch the lectures and take notes. The exam and midterm aren't bad at all and most of the questions are well-prepared for during the study guide. Some options will be answers like "the dodgers suck" or something hilarious. I took this class during COVID-19 so all of his lectures were recorded online, while he also gave a live lecture in person. Participation is required for discussion and lecture participation is done through weekly quizzes. The quizzes aren't bad either but you definitely need to pay attention. It's an easy A, as long as you put in the work, and there aren't many tricky questions compared to Sigmon's exams. I'd definitely recommend taking this class with Professor Ayala if you can keep up with the work. He's very underrated and IMO, he's not as bad as the other reviews say he is. If you're able to attend office hours or honors sections, he's incredibly knowledgeable and insightful.

I took this course during the Omicron wave, it was originally supposed to be in person but then it remained online. When he started lecturing in-person again, attendance was optional and he uploaded lecture videos on his website. So my review is solely based on my online experience.

First, the class breakdown is: Attendance and participation in Discussion Section 10%, 2nd week paper 10% (easy 2-page double spaced essay), Midterm 35%, Final 35% (not cumulative), Attendance and Participation in Lectures 10% (This will be computed by averaging the weekly quizzes).

I actually enjoyed Professor Ayala! He is super knowledgeable, accommodating/understanding, cares about students and is kinda funny. Class consisted of ~4 lecture videos each week with a weekly quiz due a week later. In my opinion, the quizzes were pretty easy as long as you watched the lecture videos. I would binge watch them all and then take the quiz while the material was still fresh in my mind. The material is interesting but it can feel like a lot at first glance. Luckily, he breaks down the class into two sections so first half is all about Karl Marx and the second half is on Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. The readings can be dense, but honestly I didn't do all the readings and still did well because of the lectures and discussion sections. Also, "ctrl + f" will be your best friend when trying to skim the readings. I also watched Youtube videos that summarize each theorist's major arguments/beliefs/writings and since these theorists are old, you can find tons of quick info online.

I had Leydy as a TA and I highly recommend her! She gave good examples and helped breakdown the main ideas. She knows this class can be hard so she's super understanding. We had optional study guide questions to help guide our readings and they make good study material. We were also given study guides for the midterm and final and that study guide came in clutch for the final! Most answers on the study guide were on the final, so that was awesome. For the midterm, most students emailed him about wanting a curve and he actually gave us one. He responded to emails pretty quickly and his class structure was very organized.

On his tests, he has answer choices like "a and b, b and c, all of the above, none of the above" which sometimes threw mw off, but he also had funny answer choices. I remember one was Game of Thrones related and he's a Dodgers fan so there were a few baseball related answer choices. His class is super doable and he's not as scary or intimidating as most people make him out to be. This class required some effort to get an A, but it's honestly pretty easy. Glad I took him despite the bad reviews!

Honestly, he is decent. His test and quizzes are worded weirdly where it is tricky. I took him during COVID-19 conditions and his course was immense. Unnecessary reading up to 50-100 pgs a week, he does give a study guide for test which is helpful but he still words things weirdly. I would recommend another teacher over him I pulled all-nighters trying to understand context.

I took this class and kept up on readings, and went to every lecture and gained the full attendance. I rarely went to discussion and got 80% in that which is what hurt my grade. Never studied for the midterm or final and got decent grades (there was a curve).

I took him for SOC 154 in spring of 2017. Just don't take him. So unorganized, a third of classes are either cancelled or you watch a movie. Reads DIRECTLY from slides, some of which are in Spanish, He says he gives you all the question on the exams as a study guide so naturally you study those questions, but he actually only uses about a half of them. 100+ pages of reading a week, There is no way to study when he does not even explain what the reading is about. Worst class I have ever taken.

I liked Professor Ayala. I took him for 101 in Winter 16. The class was straight forward. One paper, midterm, and final. He has a strong accent but you get used to it. He uses iclickers which was a bonus for me because I scored high on the polls. The reading is very heavy. With the help of the T.A. Leydy, I was able to pass this class. I would take him again.

My major gripe is the way Ayala teaches. I hated this class with more passion than Ayala had for Soc 101. You can tell he doesn’t give a crap. When answering questions about the exam, Ayala essentially advised us to complain to the TAs because they make the test and he can’t do anything about it. He also did not bother to show up to the last day of his class or the final. Doing all the readings was pain and confusion until my TA Tony made sense of them. It was a TON of work, but I managed to pull off an A because of him. Overall, I would not recommend taking Ayala.

The class is divided into participation in lecture, a midterm, and a final. Spring 2012 was the first year that Ayala tried using the iClicker-2 software to do polls for attendance and points. You get 1 attendance point for answering a question. Usually he does two questions and you get 1 attendance point and 1 correct answer point. 5 points are possible for the day. You can miss a couple points and be okay since he drops the lowest two scores. Come to class early because Ayala starts the 3-5 minute poll at arbitrary times. Once I walked in to class at 9:31 am (it’s supposed to start at 9:30) and the poll was ALREADY closed. He wouldn’t give me the participation point.

Perhaps he requires such stringent participation policies because if participation was not mandatory, students wouldn’t come to lecture. Instead of forcing people to go, maybe he should make people want to go…. Sitting through class was excruciating. Practically every slide of his PowerPoint is a quote from the reading that we don’t understand in the first place. He reads it off with his back to you most of the time. His elaboration was not particularly insightful, but it did help a bit. However, taking notes during lecture was a pain. It’s pointless to write down the quotes, which he reads off at the speed of light, but then you can’t have the slides printed out because Ayala posts them after he completes lecture---sometimes with the delay of several weeks. I asked twice if it was possible for him to post the slides before class, but he said no. I took notes on his explanations, and then I waited for him to post the PowerPoint before printing them out and writing on them. It was inefficient but the best way for me.

The midterm, made up by the TAs, consisted of 21 fill-in-the blank questions (word bank included) for a total of 60 points and four short answer questions for a total of 40 points. You heard me; the fill-in-the-blank was worth more than short answer. To make matters worse, the fill-in-the-blank seemed rather unreasonable; it was basically fill-in-the-memorized-quote to me. Some blank sentences were actually related to the terms, but the majority were vague and with three different blanks in it. I don’t remember the midterm average, but it was definitely a C or lower and I don’t think it was curved.

For the final, I think the TAs realized how ridiculous the fill-in-the-blank section was. This time around, the long answer questions were worth more. The blanks still came from quotes, but they were easier because the words were more related to the context. Both sections were fair.

I had to comment because I don't think these bad reviews are fair. I got an A this quarter (Spring 2012) because I did all the readings, used the lecture notes (powerpoint) and did his practice test. His exams are tricky only because he had a matching portion for the midterm that had 30 possible answers that were reusable for 20 questions; he changed it to just use once and 20 for 20 questions. The thing is though, that these are quotes from the major readings- not to say you'll remember them, but it helps if you can try to place it. The other part of the exams are free response- SO easy, seriously. If you understand and can summarize the main views of the thinkers he covers (Marx, Weber and Durkheim) then you will do fine.

My one criticism would be that, yes he does read from the slides, but he knows what he is talking about. Sometimes he'd get ahead of himself and use the slides to pace himself, which I think is why he reads off of them. What he is reading, though, are quotes directly from the readings, which he then explains. The only reason this was a problem for me is that his accent is a little hard to understand when he's on a roll with what he's explaining- he starts talking too fast.

However, he is a really nice man, knows what he's talking about, is very approachable and accommodating. To be honest though, I only went to his office hours once for a completely unrelated topic and I got a freaking A. The TAs are very helpful, and they are the ones writing the test.

The class is a lot of work, but honestly not difficult (AND I feel like I've learned something useful!); if I can do it, you can.

i absolutely hated this class. the professor was horrible. if you could avoid taking classes with this professor i would highly recommend that you do. he is completely unorganized, he reads directly from the slides with little or no elaboration, he always lets the class out early. if it weren't for my ta i wouldn't have passed this class.

Though the material can be hard to grasp the professor tries hard to make it digestible. If you go to his off hours he can help you to understand the material, but please read before you go and make sure you're going to the lectures. Overall I thought this class wasn't too bad. Again if you need help go to your TA and Professor, he wants to help, but only those who seek it.
Grade: B+