Measurement / Cityspan: A Database for Providers

The Cityspan database is one tool Boston After School & Beyond’s program partners will leverage throughout their data collection and program evaluation process. The database currently houses almost three years of data from 80 organizations serving the City of Boston. A citywide hub for youth participation, survey, and assessment data, Cityspan is a valuable resource for Boston Beyond and its partners alike.

Cityspan builds program capacity to:

  • Track participant data including attendance, assessments, and demographics alongside program quality data.
  • Generate a variety of reports that support day-to-day operations, benchmark programs against citywide data, and communicate results to partners, boards, and funders.
  • Administer staff surveys to assess participant skill development, and award digital badges to youth who have shown achievement or growth in certain social-emotional skills.

Using Cityspan can be broken down into five central activities. All program partners are required to complete these steps during their data collection process. Details on how to complete the five steps can be found on the following pages, as well as instructions for using additional modules and features of the database.

Step 1: Creating Your Program Profile

Begin your work in Cityspan by inputting high-level details about your program’s mission, logistics, and participant population.

Step 2: Recording Participant Information

In order to input enrollment, track attendance, and assess youth skill outcomes in the database, participants must first be registered in Cityspan.

Step 3: Inputting Program Schedule

After adding youth participant information, build your program’s daily schedule in Cityspan to indicate when youth should be attending.

Step 4: Enrolling Participants

Enrolling youth participants in your program is the last required step before tracking attendance.

Step 5: Tracking Attendance

The fifth and final core activity in Cityspan is regularly updating daily program attendance to track youth participation rates in your program.

Administering the SAYO-T

Cityspan houses an automated SAYO T administration tool to make using and managing the teacher-completed assessment more efficient.

Managing Digital Badges

For program currently using, or interested in using, Boston Beyond’s Digital Badge system, here are a set of resources and tutorials on managing Digital Badges in Cityspan.

Reporting

Boston Beyond has created a variety of reports to help deepen your understanding of the data your program collects with us. All of these reports are available in Cityspan.

Help Desk

Have questions or running into an issue you can’t solve among these pages? Click here to access FAQs and contact Boston Beyond’s Cityspan Help Desk.

Tracking Staff

Your programs’ staff data can be tracked alongside participation and program quality data in Cityspan.