Chemistry Is in the News (CIITN) is an innovative project aimed at enhancing higher-order cognitive skills (HOCS) via connecting university-level chemistry to everyday life and real-world issues. The CIITN project and its related Web tools were presented in a workshop to illustrate their conceptual framework, educational potential, and contribution to chemical education. In this paper we report on the results of a formative, evaluation case-study concerning the extent to which the goals of the CIITN workshop were attained. Accordingly, we have examined chemistry instructors' (the workshop participants) perceptions of the project, educational objectives, and ongoing teaching-assessment strategies, before and after the workshop. Although the participants showed no change in their educational objectives during the short-term workshop, an interesting induced shift was found concerning their perception of "collaboration" in teaching and learning. Our findings indicate that the chemistry instructors became more open to the idea of sharing professional pedagogical knowledge with fellow instructors, as well as encouraging teamwork and peer review among their students. (Contains 2 tables and 1 figure.)