The Aussie way:
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Fantastic fun.
May I recommend to anyone who gets offered a course like this, grab it with both hands. It has been said that it’s the best fun you are ever going to have with your trousers on.
You may actually learn something as well 
These courses are not without Thier flaws but they are fantastic ship handling teaching tools.
The one thing I learned having come from high performance ships was slow speed control in varying wind conditions on low performance single screw ships.
Things have moved on since my course 25 years ago at Marchwood they didn’t even have tugs and that course had been running since the late 70’s as the models were at Warsah (Southampton) when I was a Cadet there.
The way I describe it is that I own a 35’ motor cruiser and my prop is this big, both hands.
The model VLCC is 30’ long and the prop is this big , two fingers.
Even at the very beginning the models displayed the handling characteristics of large ships with the appropriate delays in telegraph order to the engine actually doing something.
The first session of my course had us candidates on board the simulated largest ships. Of course we treated them like boats and subsequently came to grief. The instructors called it “overcoming the silly boat syndrome” as frankly you did feel ridiculous in those silly boats .
We quickly learnt to take it seriously 
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