The purposes for which entire programs or individual faculty have implemented e-portfolios range from providing a student-centered, developmental and less prescriptive approach to teaching, learning and advising, to needing to fulfill accreditation requirements. In most cases, 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. While this unstructured open Web space does not lend itself to aggregating evidence of student learning to support program evaluation, it does provide each individual student, (regardless of program or campus location), with a space they can use to share a personalized view of what they have learned and are involved in at Penn State.

Specialized program or university-wide e-Portfolio Systems attempt to provide mechanisms to support all of these needs and there are a few pilot programs have that explored these possibilities.