Participatory learning and online learning are increasingly appealing as educational approaches which can positively affect learners. Participatory learning engages students as active participants in the full educational programme, including homework and exercises, whilst online learning offers tools that facilitate learners' collaboration and peer evaluation, minimising student and instructor overhead in the conduction of courses. This article reports on EScAlADE, a two-year EU-funded project initiated at the end of 2015, which focuses on the education of low-skilled adults through participatory online non-formal and informal learning. This article presents and discusses the first phase of the EScAlADE project. Indeed, although their project is still in progress, the authors decided to report on the survey they made at the beginning of the project as well as on a collaborative training event that took place in the intermediate project phase, since a few interesting findings have emerged from them.