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The aim of blended learning in its most common format is to join the best of classroom learning with the best of online learning. As such, it is regarded as a practice with possibilities of addressing many of the context-specific teaching and learning problems at South African higher education institutions. Many institutions in South Africa make use of a learning management system (LMS), such as Blackboard or Moodle, to facilitate the online component of courses that are presented through blended learning. As many facilitators regard the management of an online component as a great deal of extra work, they often only use the LMS to make the minimum required information available to their students. As a result, a large number of the multitude of possibilities that an LMS can offer to support the face-to-face mode of instruction are never exploited. For the past ten years the author has facilitated various undergraduate information technology courses through a blended mode. Since 2003 she has implemented several action research cycles in search of the most effective ways in which the face-to-face and online modes could be combined to enhance the learning experiences of her students. In this paper she shares some of her experiences with LMS course design and facilitation in the form of a set of directives linked to practical examples on how an LMS can be effectively utilised to create meaningful blended learning experiences in undergraduate classrooms. Although the directives are based on research conducted at one specific institution, these directives can meaningfully contribute to the enhancement of LMS course design for blended learning in other South African undergraduate classrooms.