University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) was the first Sino-foreign higher education institution (SmEI) to be established in Mainland China, and has been host to a number of student-staff project partnerships, including in the successful development of Open Education Resources (OERs). This paper reports on the completion of the first phase of an anticipated 2-year student-staff project to develop a language learning application as an OER. It explains the history and context of UNNC and the project, and discusses some of the software engineering processes completed to date. The work completed so far is described and reflected upon, and the future work and impact discussed.