A 'SWAYAM' course is classified based on the engagement of number of ______…

Concept

A MOOC platform has no academic terms of its own, so it sizes a course by two measurable quantities: the length of the study schedule the learner is expected to follow, and the volume of recorded lecture material the course delivers.

On such platforms the study schedule is counted in study weeks — the learner works through one unit of content per week — while the lecture material is counted in video hours. SWAYAM, India’s national MOOC platform run by the Ministry of Education, follows exactly this convention.

Application

The SWAYAM catalogue is organised into fixed week-length bands:

• 4-week courses

• 8-week courses

• 12-week courses

• 15-week courses

Each band is paired with an expected quantity of video hours, and a course’s category — together with the credit weightage attached to it — follows from that pair of numbers.

The stem pairs the blank with "number of video hours", so the blank must carry the other of the two quantities: the count of study weeks of engagement.

Contrast

• semesters — a semester is an individual university’s six-month teaching term; a SWAYAM course is shorter than a term and is not sized against any one institution’s calendar.

• months — the calendar month is not one of the published bands; a 12-week course does not correspond to a whole number of months.

• years — a year spans an entire academic session, far longer than any SWAYAM course band.

Result

A SWAYAM course is therefore classified by the number of weeks of engagement together with the number of video hours, so the blank is filled by "weeks".