Recursion is a fundamental concept of Computer Science that is difficult to teach and learn. Students have many misconceptions about recursion and construct mental models of recursion which are non-viable. A mental model is a student's mental representation of recursion and it provides them with predictive and explanatory powers about recursion. A mental model is non-viable if it does not allow a student to accurately and consistently represent the process of recursion.

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We describe the benefits of using SML to teach the Discrete Structures course described in the ACM Computer Science curriculum. When students in a Discrete Structures course have no prior programming experience, SML can be used to familiarize students with recursion and to illustrate various topics introduced in the course without teaching programming per se. At the same time, it reinforces the links between mathematics and CS, making Discrete Structures more relevant. SML also makes it easy to deliver and automatically evaluate online or webbased homeworks, such as with the WeBWorK system.