[achileas]

This is a pretty common learning technique, one that's been validated in cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience research, and one that in grad school (in a different field) I would teach to undergrads that were struggling in the classes I TA'ed. I only wished I had learned it as an undergrad.

For more conceptual learnings, I would instead write questions that capture the main ideas of some subsection or whatnot, then at the end of the chapter, close the book, answer the questions, and summarize the questions. Then go back and check the answers. It takes longer, but active recall helps memory encoding.