This study examined the differences between persistent and dropout students enrolled in an online course with five factors: support from family and work, academic locus of control, academic self-efficacy, time and environment management skills, and metacognitive self-regulation skills. Moreover, this study investigated the most significant factors discriminating students' success in their online course completion. A total of 169 adult students participated in the study. We used online surveys, which consisted of 27 items adopted from the literature, to measure the level of five factors of which students perceive. The analysis showed persistent students had higher levels of academic locus of control and metacognitive self-regulation skills than dropout students. Our finding suggests that these factors are the most significant factors influencing students' persistence in an online course. (Contains 1 table and 1 figure.)