diaLearn has its origins in the two phases of the web.MBA project headed by Peter Franklin, which ran from 2001 to 2006 at Konstanz University of Applied Sciences and was funded by the Federal Republic of Germany and the State of Baden-Württemberg.

The project developed a forerunner of diaLearn called fhk-MBA, blended learning scenarios for various courses on language, culture and communication in international business, the content of these courses and an authoring tool for the production of digital content to be used in further courses.

A unique feature of these developments was the embedding of this e-learning platform for formal learning in the more informal environment provided by the knowledge and learning community of dialogin The Delta Intercultural Academy.

In order to bring fhk-MBA up-to-date, give it a fresher and more modern design and more and improved ways of organising the learning and presenting its content, it was decided to completely re-launch fhk-MBA as diaLearn, an e-learning environment based on the learning management system Moodle. The team worked on the re-launch in the latter part of 2006, and diaLearn went live in the spring of 2007.