Knowledge grows from cycles of conjecture and criticism.
(Apparently this is an idea from David Deutsch.)
That is, form a mental model, a hypothesis.
Then expose that hypothesis to disconfirming evidence, for example ground truthing it.
Guess and check.
The disconfirming evidence gives you the information necessary to update your hypothesis to make it more accurate.
If you don't make a guess, then there's nothing to check, nothing to update.
Contexts where you can just passively absorb don't require you to form a hypothesis that can be tested.
It's easy to create environments that require active engagement in this loop:
Try to do the thing (instead of just reading about it).
Engage in a discussion with someone about the thing (being forced to actively distill your passively absorbed intuition).
Play a game that uses the concepts.