Wondering About the Unit Plan

A former doctoral student who is beginning a new position writes, "Turns out I'm teaching
English methods and as I'm working on the course, I am wondering about the unit plan. Do you require one? I'm pretty close to not including it because I found them hard to grade and [students at my previous institution] had to write so many. I was thinking instead of having
students do more exploratory pieces, such as a project exploring a text with response and ancillary sources, etc. What do you think is essential in a methods course these days?"

As it happens, I'm teaching our methods course ("The Teaching of English") for the first time in about seven years myself, so I share her questions. What do you think? Is the "unit plan" a necessity or a problem? Does writing them help your students or hinder them?