"I thought part of the learning process is really engaging with the cards"

I would substitute "the material" for "the cards" in this sentence. Making the cards yourself is one way to do that, but it's not always the most time effective - imagine the extra work put onto a medical student having to make the cards for every subject they need to cover. That is what ankihub does and it seems to be very popular

But yeah: downloading the median deck off of ankiweb: very sub-optimal