FAQ

We have made the first lesson of each course available for free for you to preview and enjoy. There is a fee to take courses for credit, as well as for other audit courses. See below for more details on course pricing. Credit courses also have required textbooks which must be purchased separately.

Students who take courses for credit may work toward a Bachelor of Biblical Studies from Sunset International Bible Institute. This is the same degree awarded to graduates of our Residential Studies division at our main campus in Lubbock, Texas. The certificate level of classes offer classes with the same material, but only with no paper requirements and simplified testing. Completion of all 40 courses will earn the student a Certificate of Biblical Studies. No credit is awarded for auditing a course.

Sunset International Bible Institute (SIBI) is a Bible and ministry training institute founded in 1962. Based in Lubbock, Texas, SIBI has trained thousands of individuals over the last 48 years through its residential campus in Lubbock, its branch and satellite schools worldwide, and its extensive correspondence learning program. To learn more about SIBI, please visit www.sibi.cc.

Please visit the course enrollment and information page for more detailed information.

When you audit a course on Sunset Online, it is much like auditing a course in a classroom setting. You can watch the teacher and listen to the lessons, but you don't have to do any assignments or take tests. When you enroll in an audit course on Sunset Online, you get full access to all of the lessons in the course. Each of which consists of the following:

• Streaming video of the instructor teaching
• Streaming audio of the instructor teaching (an alternative to streaming video for those with slower computers or internet connections)
• An online study guide (a text outline of important lesson points)

Audit courses are designed for those who want to learn and grow but do not want to pursue credit for their learning. There are no assignments, tests, or other requirements in audit courses.

Taking a course at the certificate level allows the student to be challenged beyond the audit level of study. Students must complete all courses in the certificate level to receive a certificate of completion. Certificate courses cannot be transferred into credit courses.

• Streaming video of the instructor teaching
• An online study guide to follow along, answer questions and study for exams
• Assessments are based on memory work and exams (from the study guide questions)

Taking a course as a credit student allows you to receive full SIBI credit for your accomplishment. The requirements for credit courses are detailed on each course's "Credit Requirements" page but generally include most or all of the following:

• Watching or listening to the lessons online
• Reading of textbooks
• Assigned readings from the Bible
• Memory work (Bible verses that must be memorized)
• Evaluation Papers and Research Papers
• Exams - each course includes a Midterm Exam and a Final Exam

What is the cost of courses at Sunset Online, and what is included?

The first lesson of each of our courses is offered free of charge for your preview. Complete audit courses are $25 each. Audit courses include full streaming video and audio for each lesson and an online study outline. Certificate courses are $50 per course. Credit courses are each 3-credit hours for a course fee of $135. This includes the same streaming video and audio as the audit courses.

Credit courses also include:

• Course requirements must be completed to pass the course (see the question above for detail).
• Grading of assignments by SunsetOnline staff.
• A grade book to keep track of your grades in the course. 
  

Most importantly, every credit course you pass earns you credit on your transcript at SIBI.

Note: Tuition prices for our courses are subject to change without notice at our discretion.

Note: Any required textbooks for-credit courses are not included in the price. Your textbooks must be purchased separately. The "Credit Requirements" page for each course lists the required textbook(s) for the course, along with links to purchase them online from extensionschool.com (the online bookstore for sunsetonline.org).

When you enroll in a course, you are given access to the course for seven months, regardless of how many lessons exist in the course. Extensions are granted on a case-by-case basis, and if you are actively working on completing course assignments.

 

The combination of enrollment durations and prices (listed above) for our courses is a good value compared to other higher-level online courses available. However, there may be certain circumstances in which a student who has enrolled in a course might want to ask for an extension of that enrollment as it nears its expiration. Such requests are handled on a case-by-case basis and should be submitted by contacting the Sunset Online Student Office and stating the particulars of your situation.

Yes. Scholarships are available for prospective students outside of the United States who otherwise are not financially able to take credit courses online. These scholarships are available for credit or certificate enrollments only, not for audit.

To learn more about scholarships and to see the application forms, please see the Sunset Online Scholarship Info page.

Yes, the online Bachelor of Biblical Studies degree application is now available for you to fill out.  We would encourage you to go ahead and fill it out now and begin your studies. Your application will be approved upon review. The classes you take for credit until approval count towards your online degree. All degree students must apply: Sunset Online Student Application

If you have spam filtering on your email account, please ensure that you receive emails from sunsetonline.org. Otherwise, you may not receive the confirmation email that was sent when you registered. We have experienced this problem with several AOL email addresses. First, check your email reader's junk/bulk mail folder. Most email readers (including Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, AOL, Outlook, and Thunderbird) have junk mail filtering that can sometimes filter out your account confirmation email. Look for an email in your junk/bulk mail folder with the subject "SunsetOnline.org: account confirmation". We have experienced some email providers who refuse to deliver our messages. Contact Sunset Online technical support immediately so that we can confirm with you before your initial registration expires.

If you still can't find the confirmation email, it is possible that you had a typo in your email address when registering, and it never got to your email in the first place. Contact Sunset Online technical support and include the following: your name, your email address, and the date that you attempted to register on the site.

Resetting your password is a process that can be done in less than two minutes:

1. Go to the Forgotten Password page and enter your email address. This must be the same email address you used when you created your account on Sunset Online and must be an email address that you still have access to. Click the "OK" button.
2. The page will reload and confirm that an email has been sent to your email address with a link that you must click. Check your email and look for an email with the subject, "SunsetOnline.org: change password confirmation". Click the confirmation link within that email to confirm that you want to reset your password.
3. Clicking the link in the previous step will bring you to a page confirming that a second email has been sent to you containing a new, auto-generated password. Recheck your email and look for an email with the subject, "SunsetOnline.org: Changed password". In the email, you will find your username as well as your new, auto-generated password.

If you are content with the new, auto-generated password that was emailed to you in step 3, then you are done. You may not log in to the site using that password. However, you may prefer to change the password to something of your choosing that you'll have an easier time remembering. In that case, go to the Change Password page and enter the following in the fields on that page:

• Username - your username, as included in the email from step 3 above.
• Password - your current password, which is the auto-generated one that was emailed to you in step 3 above.
• New password (twice) - type a new password of your choosing that you would like to change to.

Most lessons in from our studio courses are between 25 and 30 minutes in length. The newer online classroom videos are much longer. They are typically between 1 hour to 1.5 hours and vary greatly in length.

If you are having technical difficulties trying to take a course, please consult the questions in the Troubleshooting section of this page. If your problem is not addressed there, or if you're still having the problem after trying the solutions offered there, please contact the webmaster.

Taking a Level 2 class means you are taking a class at a level between full credit and audit. It has limited reading, papers, and other requirements. Level 2 is equivalent to the Certificate level.

As a student, you will receive access to the Student Portal that provides expectations on how to properly format your papers.  SIBI uses MLA format and examples are provided in each course.  A secondary guide is found in this excerpt from the Satellite School Handbook for details on writing papers, although use the MLA Style Summary found in each course as your main guide.

Most computers manufactured in the last ten years should work fine with sunsetonline.org. 

Sunset Online has been designed to work as well as possible with a wide variety of computers. There are very good chances that you won't have to download anything at all to use the site. The following are all that is needed:

If you see the words "JavaScript is enabled" in the box below, you have JavaScript enabled.

A "cookie" is a small, harmless file that a website (such as sunsetonline.org) stores on your computer while you are visiting the site. It makes it possible for you to log in to a site such as sunsetonline.org and stay logged in throughout your visit.

To enable cookies, simply visit this page and follow the simple instructions for the web browser you are using.

JavaScript is a feature offered by all modern web browsers, but occasionally users have it disabled. JavaScript is required for you to be able to view the lessons on sunsetonline.org, and for-credit students to be able to turn in assignments and take exams.

To enable JavaScript, simply visit this page and follow the simple instructions for the web browser you are using.

This is probably caused by some popup-blocking software installed on your computer, or built into your browser. We have particularly seen this occur with the popup blocking in Google Toolbar (a free browser add-on from Google).

If you are having this problem, you will need to configure your popup blocker to allow popups from sunsetonline.org. This is done by adding sunsetonline.org to what is called a "whitelist" in your popup blocker software. For instructions on how to do this with Google Toolbar, click here.