The purposes for which e-portfolios entire programs or individual faculty have implemented e-portfolios range from needs to fulfilling accreditation requirements to providing a student-centered, developmental and less prescriptive approach to teaching, learning and advising. These purposes need not be mutually exclusive.

Until the advent of the Penn State Blog, open Web space (PASS) required users to learn basic web publishing skills in order to share information about their Penn State experience. Moreover, this unstructured open Web space does not lend itself to aggregating evidence of student learning to support program evaluation.

e-Portfolio Systems provide mechanisms to support both of these needs and there are a few pilot programs have that explored these possibilities.