Abstract
So far, much research has been conducted on the students' motivation in the low-stakes situations but there has been very limited research that has focused exclusively on the impact of students' perception of the stakes of the tests on different components of engagement especially in distance education system. The purpose of this causal-comparative study is to compare student engagement levels between low-stakes and high-stakes assessment contexts in Payame Noor University in Iran. The results showed that the difference between the two groups was significant only in behavioral engagement but at emotional and cognitive components, students showed a relatively similar level of engagement under both low- stakes and high- stakes assessment conditions.